End of the story?

May 15, 2003 1:16 AM

BushCo Reams Nation Good. No WMDs after all, no excuse for war, too late for anyone to care anymore. Ha-ha, suckers. And that's that.
posted by magullo (38 comments total)

Hey, I gotta brand new dance for ya kids, it's called the Iraq Backtrack.

It goes a little something like this, and this.

I dunno, it's like they said, "Hey there's this emergency! I need to borrow your car to take my aunt to hospital, she's been in an accident!" And you're so, sure, sure, here's the keys, and then they're discovered banging a cheap prostitute in the back seat by the police, and it's in the local newspaper, and they're all, "Hey, I don't even have an aunt, I don't know what you're talking about."

Let's all say it together...

Bait and switch

Bait and switch.
posted by Blue Stone at 1:29 AM on May 15, 2003

You really have to laugh. Because it's just so wonderfully ridiculous. In a rather disgusting, soul-draining sort of way.

Yes, I know exactly what he means. That column gives me the same feeling.
posted by hippugeek at 1:43 AM on May 15, 2003

Oh, I get it, it's like the anti-war crew never got anything wrong in their life. Hundreds of thousands didn't die, there was no refugee crisis, oil wells weren't set on fire, there were no door-to-door street battles, Iraq didn't retaliate against Israel, infrastructure wasn't destroyed.
posted by mstillwell at 2:00 AM on May 15, 2003

Funny mstillwell, I'm solidly anti-war, and I never said any of those things would happen. And I heard about the possible street battles/Israel retaliation on right-wing talk radio.

Also, there's a difference between being honestly wrong while trying to avoid war, and being deceitfully wrong in order to start one.
posted by fnord_prefect at 2:11 AM on May 15, 2003

I love a good rant.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 2:23 AM on May 15, 2003

". . . add it to the list of this lifetime's spiritual humiliations, as you wait for the next barrage, the imminent announcement that we're about to do it all again."

Think about it.
posted by DBAPaul at 2:38 AM on May 15, 2003

mstillwell: you're missing the point. I have no doubt in my mind that Saddam was an asshole that needed a good thwacking. He terrorized his people for years and it's high time he was taken down. Yay! However, liberating the people of Iraq was NOT the point of the war. Weapons of Mass Distraction..er Destruction. His WMDs were a serious threat. He was funding and supplying terrorists. THESE are the supposed reasons for the war.

Bottom line...This war was illegal. We did it without UN sanction and without proof of WMDs. Now, weeks later, we still have no proof of WMDs and world opinion of the US is at an all time low.

Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, eh?
posted by lasthrsman at 2:40 AM on May 15, 2003

Strike two, and still hoping for strike three.

Oh, who could have ever thought Iraq possessed weapons?

Time will tell.
posted by hama7 at 3:07 AM on May 15, 2003

hama7, you linked to a CIA site which uses the terms "probably" and "is capable of" pathetically too many times, and all of those news articles are bylined last week. Again, you've proven the point lasthrsman made. Are you actually trying to say it was the RIGHT thing to invade Iraq and search for the excuse later?
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 3:52 AM on May 15, 2003

Hundreds of thousands didn't die

Yeah, only a few thousand. Few thousand deaths don't matter, unless they're Americans, right?

oil wells weren't set on fire

Well, we secured the hell out of them, but that's not what the war was for. Nope. We gave just as much security interest to hospitals and museums. Yep.

Iraq didn't retaliate against Israel

Yes. To do that, they would have needed the weapons we claimed they had as an excuse to invade to prevent them from.... not using.

So.... ultimately, the Bush administration blatantly lied (sorry, "it was just a matter of emphasis,") and the excuse is "well the anti-war guys made farfetched predictions?" To equate what people like me called fears with what people like Bush called "facts" is ludicrous.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 4:06 AM on May 15, 2003

great piece of razor sarcasm. could't have said it better myself. too bad most americans are hypnotized by american idol and shrubco's stage-whispered but incessant invocations of jeebus. ya know, any born-rich life-long party-boy who buys the presidency and unleashes a flood of violence on the world (as if it needed it) while all along slowly and steadily grinding down the constitution is ok in uhmurkuhs book so long as he lubs jeebus our savior. he's a true uhmurkun hero compared with those religious freakazoid towelhead terrists. ayup.
posted by quonsar at 4:37 AM on May 15, 2003

That Bush.

He sucks, doesn't he?

I guess I'm just becoming inured to the lies and the deceit...
posted by jpburns at 4:51 AM on May 15, 2003

I guess I'm just becoming inured to the lies and the deceit...

yes. they are counting on that.
posted by quonsar at 5:14 AM on May 15, 2003

mstillwell,

I think you're missing the point. If the anti-war people were wrong about certain things, they didn't have access to top-level intelligence and military briefings (I grudgingly accepted Bush's explanation for this very reason: I don't have access to the information that he does. Perhaps that is why I feel so deceived.) Besides, the anti-war people weren't trying to sell violence on false pretenses.

I don't think Bush was simply wrong; he and his crew lied. If you're a Democrat and lie (over a blowjob,) you get impeached. If you're a Republican and you lie (to start a war that has killed thousands,) you're celebrated as a war hero (particularly after a moronic carrier-landing stunt.)
posted by drstrangelove at 6:11 AM on May 15, 2003

but, but, he loves JESUS!!!!!
posted by quonsar at 6:13 AM on May 15, 2003

The bottom line is that they are using fear and a media assisted American ignorance to hoax us. Perhaps we should use the same tricks against them?

/gratuitous_selflink
posted by Domain Master 666 at 6:26 AM on May 15, 2003

oops

posted by Domain Master 666 at 6:29 AM on May 15, 2003

Vote Libertarian. They might pull the exact same crap, but they'd be up-front about it.
posted by alumshubby at 6:50 AM on May 15, 2003

what about that mass grave thing?
posted by shoos at 7:06 AM on May 15, 2003

oh sorry, those weren't dead americans. my bad.
posted by shoos at 7:10 AM on May 15, 2003

Is there a point to this post? I mean, I really thought that people had very vocal opposition to posting A) IraqFilter noise; B)NewsFilter noise; C) OpinionFilter noise and; D) ShitFilter noise. I thought the point of MetaFILTER was to separate the crap like "am I all your base or not" and the "news" articles (actually this one's an OP-ED piece, not even at the level of news material) presented on a mainstream news site such as the SF Gate and to leave us with new and interesting things to discuss, but apparently all that electronic shouting was just horse shit, because blatant terds like this gets to sit so nicely and prominently there taking up valuable real estate on the front page. Thanks contributors for promoting this blatant literary diarrhea and this kind of waste of MeFi bandwidth.
posted by Pollomacho at 7:14 AM on May 15, 2003

see, shoos, you make it clear that the camps are still talking straight past each other. That Hussein was a horrible person was never really at question. The question ShrubCo. posed was whether Hussein was going to be (at some undisclosed future date using undisclosed piles of chemical weapons) able to launch an attack on the US. This, if you will recall VERY ARGUMENT THEY MADE FOR THE WAR, was the entire basis of their argument. Going in to take out bad people isn't a good strategy because it sets a nasty precedent which would spread us way too thin over close to half of the globe. On that logic, we should have liberated the Congo, who have had things far, far worse over the last fifty years than the Iraqis.

What part of 'bait and switch' don't you get?

Bait = WMD
Switch = Iraqi Liberation = Total Chaos, apparently.
posted by kaibutsu at 7:15 AM on May 15, 2003

shoos,

You mean the mass graves of people we encouraged to rise up against Saddam in 1991 that we subsequently abandoned?
posted by drstrangelove at 7:16 AM on May 15, 2003

And for what it's worth, I agree with pollomacho that this post blows.
posted by kaibutsu at 7:17 AM on May 15, 2003

w00t! American liberation rocks!!! I can't wait until they come and librerate my America!!!
posted by kaibutsu at 7:18 AM on May 15, 2003

There were more than one (ie, the wmd) reason given for invading. One of these has been clearly validated.
posted by shoos at 7:27 AM on May 15, 2003

And I heard about the possible street battles/Israel retaliation on right-wing talk radio.

Do you really have to put "right-wing" infront of "talk radio"?

Isn't that already implied?
posted by themikeb at 7:32 AM on May 15, 2003

shoos,

The reasons kept changing... The justification to the rest of the world (which, of course, means nuthin' since only we only care 'bout what 'Merukuns think) was to rid "Sodom" of his gosh-darned weapons.

And, you've avoided the point about those mass grave: those people were slaughtered after we encouraged them to rise up against "Sodom." To act like we have no culpability in their deaths is pure bullshit.
posted by drstrangelove at 7:37 AM on May 15, 2003

fnord: What were your reasons for being against the war? Do you dispute that many people were against the war for the reasons I gave? (Feel free to dare me to produce sources for this if you want.)

XQUZYPHYR: A few thousand people were killed in just one of Saddam's purges! I like the way you describe your reasons for opposing the war to "fears," as opposed to Bush's "facts." Are you saying I wasn't supposed to take them seriously? (I don't really care what you call them: "fears," "concerns," "facts," it's all the same.)

No WMDs have been found. From this, you can say is that perhaps he didn't have them. You can also say that Bush needs better intelligence. But you can't say that Bush lied! This doesn't follow!

Einstein famously wrote Roosevelt urging him to develop nuclear weapons because he thought the Germans would get there first. Could they have? Maybe, maybe not. (After the war Heisenberg said he wasn't trying.) I still think Einstein was right to write that letter, and it was a good thing that the threat was taken seriously.
posted by mstillwell at 7:39 AM on May 15, 2003

Thanks contributors for promoting this blatant literary diarrhea and this kind of waste of MeFi bandwidth.

Pollomocho, you are SO behind the times. Even fearless leader has lain down his sword and fled the path of the newsfilter, self-link, double post juggernaut. give it up.
posted by quonsar at 7:39 AM on May 15, 2003

No matter what came of this war, vis a vis the Iraqi people, is it necessarily bad because the US did not help them in 1990?
posted by shoos at 7:46 AM on May 15, 2003

mstillwell: Actually, you can say that Bush & Co. lied. Colin Powell gave irrefutable 'proof' in front of the UN weapons council -- we had proof that they had WMDs, we had satellite photos indicating where they were, and we had their communications bugged so we knew what they were doing with them.

If our intelligence is so great (and, honestly, I have no doubt that it is) why haven't we found WMDs? Could it be...oh, i dunno....that Powell LIED to the UN? Is there some other plausible explanation? Maybe he didn't know our evidence was fake, or old?
posted by graventy at 7:51 AM on May 15, 2003

Pollomocho, you are SO behind the times.

Jeez, who knew? And here I thought that was what IraqFilter was made for, oh well shows what I know. But then again the ramblings here show that many folks are skipping over the news section of their papers and going strait to OP-ED. No weapons have yet been found, true, because the search for them was conducted by a small military group, which incidentally was just removed a few days ago as the larger, more skilled, civilian/military search team moves in, to search the remaining more than 80% of sites that were listed as potential WMD sites but have yet to be checked out. Two trucks like those described by Powell in his address to the UN were discovered at two of the sites out of the approximately 110 sites searched so far, that's approximately 2% of the potential sites searched so far leading to discoveries (that have been made public anyway) which would mean that if the trend keeps up they will find another 10 before they are done. That is, as long as they exist and as long as they weren't moved somewhere else (like Chechnia say for instance). But that information would be in the non-OP-ED sections of the papers so many folks would have missed that before spouting off about how we were screwed further by our evil dictator.

Also in other news of our evil dictator not found in the OP-ED section, President backs goddamn hippie assault weapon ban but lays low for fears of backlash from true American patriots (TM) and furthermore has made it illegal to be found with a gun in "liberated" Iraq. Freedom at what cost?
posted by Pollomacho at 8:10 AM on May 15, 2003

Thanks contributors for promoting this blatant literary diarrhea and this kind of waste of MeFi bandwidth.

w fixed daddys mess he left behind and we got our hands on A LOT of oil in the process - now shut up and fall in line! and no mentioning the "I" word on MeFi dammnit!



canard

n : a deliberately misleading fabrication
posted by specialk420 at 8:12 AM on May 15, 2003

graventy: a lie is to believe one thing and say another. I don't know what Powell said to the U.N. but *believing* that he had proof (even if he didn't) and then saying that he did doesn't make what he said a lie. You're saying that the U.S.'s intelligence is so good that there's no way that Powell could not have known that Iraq had no WMDs? I haven't seen any evidence of this.
posted by mstillwell at 8:14 AM on May 15, 2003

U.S.'s intelligence is so good that there's no way that Powell could not have known that Iraq had no WMDs? I haven't seen any evidence of this.

What that Iraq had no WMD's or that Powell knew that, because I see no evidence of either yet?
posted by Pollomacho at 8:24 AM on May 15, 2003

The author of this op-ed, I believe, also wrote the Matrix Reloaded: Kingdom of Ass-Kicking review. I recognize his style.
posted by soyjoy at 8:29 AM on May 15, 2003

"fears," "concerns," "facts," it's all the same...

America today. Get used to it, you despicable pack of useless foreigners: our fears are your facts.

Hmmmm...I fear I could use a little more oil. And some land would be nice...
posted by umberto at 8:41 AM on May 15, 2003