Iraqi Journalist Throws Shoes At Bush..Misses

[Tin Foil Timothy]

When you have to break new records in logical fallacies, this is nature's way of telling you that you're wrong.

I make that a false trichotomy involving three different straw men. If you're going for some sort of a record, why don't you throw in a petitio principii?

Would it qualify as a stundie ?

I wanted to nominate his "pro-democracy Bush!" assertion.

 

[Dr Adequate]

Over 70,000 French citizens died from Allied bombings before France was liberated in WWII. Nearly a million French homes were destroyed, or partially destroyed, by the Allies and even one or two cities were completely destroyed. Yet, most french citizens were indeed grateful for being liberated.

Yes. They were. In particular, I can't remember any French citizens making suicide attacks against the Allies. So if Iraqis don't feel the same way, maybe there is a real and significant diffence between the invasion of Iraq and the liberation of France.

 

[Tin Foil Timothy]

Yes. They were. In particular, I can't remember any French citizens making suicide attacks against the Allies. So if Iraqis don't feel the same way, maybe there is a real and significant diffence between the invasion of Iraq and the liberation of France.

Here's an obvious one.

France was occupied by a foreign power before it's liberation

Iraq was occupied by a foreign power after it's invasion.


Surely no one is comparing the two scenarios with a straight face.

 

[Cicero]

Here's an obvious one.

France was occupied by a foreign power before it's liberation

Iraq was occupied by a foreign power after it's invasion.


Surely no one is comparing the two scenarios with a straight face.

The Resistance in France during WWII was a tiny segment of the overall population. Most of the French people didn't even care about being occupied by the Nazis and even turned their Jews over to the Nazis before even being asked to do so. Yet, the French people threw flowers at their American and British liberators.

Of course the South of France was under Vichy control. So your occupation analogy falls flat.

Oddly enough, the Americans were also greeted as liberators when they got to Baghdad. Unfortunately, the Americans over stayed their welcome.

Saddam occupied Kuwait in 1991. Think of the Gulf War II as just a continuation of that war and you get the same comparison to expelling the Germans from France and then pursuing them into Germany to topple the Hitler regime.

 

[Dr Adequate]

Tin Foil Timothy is arguing with Cicero.

This is sweet. Dante would have put them next to one another in Hell.

I wish I had some popcorn. Give me some popcorn.

 

[Cicero]

I wish I had some popcorn. Give me some popcorn.

Maybe you might stumble across a kernel of truth in that bag to compensate for the lack of any in your posts.

 

[Dr Adequate]

Maybe you might stumble across a kernel of truth in that bag to compensate for the lack of any in your posts.

If you can find any errors in my posts, you are of course free to point them out rather than just pretending that they exist.

Of course I realise that the second of these two options is easier for you.

 

[Dr Adequate]

There is no silly straw doll...

I quoted it.

Denial of the bleedin' obvious is not your friend.

 

[articulett]

Tin Foil Timothy is arguing with Cicero.

This is sweet. Dante would have put them next to one another in Hell.

I wish I had some popcorn. Give me some popcorn.

 

[Tin Foil Timothy]

Oddly enough, the Americans were also greeted as liberators when they got to Baghdad.

Yeah by the paid crowd who slapped Saddam's toppled statue with shoes for the western media cameras while at the same time the CPA was illegally creating Iraqi laws allowing tax free removal of Iraq's wealth and the ability of mercenary thugs from Blackwater to kill Iraqi civilians for fun under impunity form the law.

You should learn what liberation actually means. What it doesn't mean is removing an evil tyrant only to create something much worse.

 

[Tin Foil Timothy]

Most of the French people didn't even care about being occupied by the Nazi.

Pure comedy!!!

 

[Cicero]

Pure comedy!!!

Humorous and true. Are you of Iraqi and French heritage or something?

 

[Cicero]

Yeah by the paid crowd who slapped Saddam's toppled statue with shoes for the western media cameras while at the same time the CPA was illegally creating Iraqi laws allowing tax free removal of Iraq's wealth and the ability of mercenary thugs from Blackwater to kill Iraqi civilians for fun under impunity form the law.

You should learn what liberation actually means. What it doesn't mean is removing an evil tyrant only to create something much worse.

The Iraqi citizens who initally greeted the American military with cheer were all paid for their enthusiasm? Would you have any evidance of this other than your innate hatred of Bush, the American military, and your devotion to Bathists?

 

[Darth Rotor]

My Orwell quote was not aimed at Bush et al, but at Skeptic, when he claimed that WMDs were never offered as the main reason for invading Iraq. This is a blatant rewriting of history. This is indeed on a par with Stalin airbrushing Trotsky out of photographs and with the Orwellian statement that "We have always been at war with Eastasia."

I get that.

FWIW, we (the US and maybe bits and pieces of the UN) had been sort of at war (no armistice, just a non resolved cease fire) with Iraq from 1991 on. UN is still sort of at war with North Korea, as all we have is an unresolved cease fire, not a full armistice.

It was at a low simmer, sure, but I don't call Desert Fox a peaceful interchange between parties, nor the various strikes in the Northern and Southern No Fly Zones.

Casualus belli, or belli interuptus. Pick your poison.

DR

 

[Darth Rotor]

The Iraqi citizens who initally greeted the American military with cheer were all paid for their enthusiasm? Would you have any evidance of this other than your innate hatred of Bush, the American military, and your devotion to Bathists?

He's a Knight of the Ba'ath, is he?

 

[Darth Rotor]

The Iraqi citizens who initally greeted the American military with cheer were all paid for their enthusiasm? Would you have any evidance of this other than your innate hatred of Bush, the American military, and your devotion to Bathists?

Tim might be unaware that not a few Shia in the South were very pleased to see Saddam's regime dissolve. Not a few decided that US and friends were starting to overstay their welcome, as time went on.

DR

 

[Cicero]

Tim might be unaware that not a few Shia in the South were very pleased to see Saddam's regime dissolve. Not a few decided that US and friends were starting to overstay their welcome, as time went on.

DR

TFT has a difficult time processing any information that does not feed his weltanschauung.

 

[Dr Adequate]

I get that.

FWIW, we (the US and maybe bits and pieces of the UN) had been sort of at war (no armistice, just a non resolved cease fire) with Iraq from 1991 on. UN is still sort of at war with North Korea, as all we have is an unresolved cease fire, not a full armistice.

It was at a low simmer, sure, but I don't call Desert Fox a peaceful interchange between parties, nor the various strikes in the Northern and Southern No Fly Zones.

Casualus belli, or belli interuptus. Pick your poison.

DR

I wasn't actually claiming that "we have always been at war with Eastasia"; it's a literary reference to the blatancy with which Skeptic rewrites history.

The world of Nineteen Eighty-Four is built around a never-ending war involving the book's three superstates, with two allied powers fighting against the third ... The allied states occasionally split with each other and new alliances are formed. Each time this happens, history is rewritten to convince the people that the new alliances always existed, using the principles of doublethink ... Throughout the first half of the novel, Oceania is allied with Eastasia, and Oceania's forces are combating Eurasia's troops in northern Africa.

Midway through the book, the alliance breaks apart and Oceania, newly allied with Eurasia, begins a campaign against Eastasian forces. This happens during "Hate Week" (a week of extreme focus on the malice supposed of Oceania's enemies, the purpose of which is to stir up patriotic fervour in support of the Party). The public is quite abnormally blind to the change, and when a public orator, mid-sentence, changes the name of the enemy from Eurasia to Eastasia (still speaking as if nothing had changed), the people are shocked and soon enraged as they notice that all the flags and posters are wrong and tear them down. This is the origin of the idiom "we've always been at war with Eastasia".​

 

[Darth Rotor]

I wasn't actually claiming that "we have always been at war with Eastasia"; it's a literary reference to the blatancy with which Skeptic rewrites history.

I read the book. What Orwell wrote is a caricature of political use of propaganda. It's lovely for what it is. I also get the overuse of that reference on this internet subforum.

Why do I find that reference of little use? We have a significant availability of informational variety that 1984's environment didn't have.

What I was hoping to do was apply a little of the forever war idea to the more practical issue in practice, be it the forever war with Iraq since 1991 to now, as they are part of a continuum, or the forever war of the past sixty years between Israel and its varied opponents. The risk of the US slipping into the condition of being a warfare state isn't zero. I am not convinced that sufficient lessons have been learned of the Soviet Union's adapting that model -- which is the authoritarian model that Orwell lampoons, -- and the long term costs. In short, Bush's decision at approaching the War on Terror have, in some ways, been a step toward embracing that approach, the warfare state, regarding a non-state, terrorists, for which Orwells's model is bloody useless. His paradigm was states.

For a useful look at the development of the permanent warfare state,

James J. Schneider

The Structure of Strategic Revolution: Total War and the Roots of the Soviet Warfare State
http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Strategic-Revolution-Soviet-Warfare/dp/089141522X

Caveat: it's a decade old, so may or may not address the topic as freshly as one might wish in light of how Russian sources come and go in the intervening years to now. Also, limited in scope to not embody as much of the eventual breaking of said warfare state. Deadlines are what they are.

DR

 

[Tin Foil Timothy]

The Iraqi citizens who initally greeted the American military with cheer were all paid for their enthusiasm? Would you have any evidance of this other than your innate hatred of Bush, the American military, and your devotion to Bathists?

Will the real Cicero please stand up?

The real Cicero wouldn't accuse anyone of hating bush, hating the American Military, and be devoted to Ba'athists.

You are obviously a fraud.

I will admit to disliking Bush though. Although I couldn't really say I hate him. It's difficult to hate someone who is a complete laughing stock.