US Government Caught Manipulating Wikipedia 471
surfi writes "As The Inquirer points out, someone with a House of Representatives IP address has been feeding propaganda into the 'invasion of Iraq' article on Wikipedia."
Well at least they are in good company with trustworthy institutions like
the CIA and the Vatican.
They're not that stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
They'd probably at the very least get their 'operatives' to go home, get one of those free AOL CDs (etc), and do it from a public IP range.
What's more likely is that this is someone who got bored at work (at the Vatican etc), and decided to put their personal opinions in. The nature of their work usually implies their beliefs are coincident with that of their employers.
As for TFA, it states "One has to wonder how reliable an encyclopaedia is when it peddles government propaganda in an almost Orwellian manner"; Seems a bit like FUD to me. The whole point of wikipedia is that it is constantly peer reviewed. If things are incorrect, people will eventually correct them - I fail to see how that's Orwellian. If anything, changing pages in this manner actually brings MORE attention to the issue [wikipedia.org].
Whoa, whoa, whoa (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean individuals within the government can edit "the encyclopedia anyone can edit", too?
*Pause for stunned silence*
Or do we only let people not affiliated with governments edit Wikipedia? Or perhaps only from home?
Or perhaps we'd prefer that governments edit Wikipedia from unattributable IP addresses...?
Or could it be that a person with a "House of Representatives IP address" is actually acting of his or her own will, making what they feel are appropriate changes to a Wikipedia article, which can be vetted, reversed, modified, and discussed, as can any change on Wikipedia?
How does one person with a House IP equate to "US Government Caught Manipulating Wikipedia"? The biggest surprise about this story is that it didn't read "Posted by kdawson". Seriously, is this the kind of politically-charged meaningless garbage that passes for front-page material on slashdot now?
Oh, wait, I guess I must speaking for the government now, and not myself. Perhaps this post is even propaganda...after all, anyone who works for "the government" can't possibly have their own views and beliefs, some of which might even differ from others [weeklystandard.com]. Oh, it's the Weekly Standard, so it doesn't count? This whole article is couched in assertions such as it being "bizarre" to make a connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda.Except that such a connection was explored in various ways for a decade, long before Bush was in office.Oops.
No link was ever really substantive, but there were links, and that shouldn't be surprising in the region. But that isn't even the point.
Those who want to paint all these issues as black and white, or say that some official or another "lied" about complex issues related to WMD in Iraq, OIF, etc., are the ones who are effectively the liars -- by ignoring everything that doesn't neatly support their own political positions. They lap up the new Iran NIE like it's gospel, while simultaneously writing off anything else that doesn't support their own views as lies. How convenient...and disgusting, for people who fancy themselves as enlightened intellectuals.
I don't understand... (Score:2, Insightful)
Wikipedia isn't just the article at any given point in time. It's the article throughout it's whole history, changes and differences intact. By it's very nature as a (mostly) amatuer-penned encylopedia, any given article is going to be filled with bias one way or another. Assuming that references exist throughout the history of the article, then you should be able to mostly eliminate bias by reading through the whole thing, changes by both sides and all.
Why is it a bad thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a wiki article... (Score:2, Insightful)
Sorry, as much as I'd like to scream Foul Play on this one; I can't.
Idiots still don't get how the internet works (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:They're not that stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
The government is vast and composed almost entirely of low-paid operatives. I have no problem believing they could try something like this and get caught. I have a hard time believing in the government as shadowy cabal that is capable of concealing vast conspiracies for years or decades at a time.
Re:Whoa, whoa, whoa (Score:4, Insightful)
In fact, every single edit I see on that page, save for perhaps the one in the first paragraph which is a little over the top, makes the article more factually accurate, if that's what we're interested in.
Re:Any rationale is blowing smoke! (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
"Visitors do not need specialised qualifications to contribute, since their primary role is to write articles that cover existing knowledge; this means that people of all ages and cultural and social background can write Wikipedia articles. With rare exceptions, articles can be edited by anyone with access to the Internet, simply by clicking the edit this page link. Anyone is welcome to add information, cross-references or citations, as long as they do so within Wikipedia's editing policies and to an appropriate standard. For example, if you add information to an article, be sure to include your references, as unreferenced facts are subject to removal."
I don't see any rules against government, people editing their own pages, etc. Only that facts be added, if they aren't they should be removed.
Re:Reads like a gossip column... (Score:1, Insightful)
My opinion? Bush is a borderline retard who can't pronounce nuclear without Cheney's hand up his ass, AND he's controlled by machiavellian masterminds with tendrils throughout all aspects of government and our lives. Just because the guy in the Big Chair is Bubba doesn't mean the black helicopters aren't there.
Re:They're not that stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
Manipulating vs editing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's a wiki article... (Score:1, Insightful)
The changes fundamentally alter the facts presented in the article. If it said "fact A is true" before and says "It is claimed by some that fact A is true" after then whoever made the change is asserting that fact A is not established. That's a pretty serious change, given that these facts are undisputed by objective analysis.
Furthermore, consider this addition: "[Saddam's supposed involvement in 9/11] was never suggested by President Bush or the Bush administration as a justification for the invasion...." Is this what you call "grammatical in nature"? It seems to me that someone is attempting to declare (without citation!) that Bush never implied a connection between Hussein and 9/11 to drum up support. This claim is so ridiculous that I honestly don't know how you could call it anything but propaganda, let alone "grammatical"!
Re:Whoa, whoa, whoa (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Whoa, whoa, whoa (Score:2, Insightful)
Now I happen to think that some of the edits went a bit too far in that direction. But to call the edits partisan or manipulative just because they gave the benefit of the doubt to Bush is going too far. And comparing it to book burning is way over the top, given that no information was even removed from the article.
Underwhelming (Score:3, Insightful)
And here I was expecting some Dan Brownesque intrigue of large-scale controversial religious/historical edits. Anyone consider these "manipulations" are just some random user who happens to be on the network owned by the "manipulating organization"?
Primary Source? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe my understanding is off, but wouldn't the US government be the perfect entity to write encyclopedia article given that they are the primary source in the scope of their job? Would the US Forest Service agent who was present in the California Wildfires in 2007 be the perfect source to write (if he could be objective, and without bias) of the factual events of the fires, such as "At 8PM 27 fire engines from 6 counties began working on and achieved containment at 10PM". Or In a "perfect" system, would not an encyclopedia only contain factual data such as "On 12/12/2007, this person was quoted as saying
Even from elected officials, such as congressmen, I think it would be great to have themselves or staff or a Gov't official append their voting record to their wikipedia page. I think having a wikipedia page for every bill voted on in congress with a short summary, the bills sponsor, the committee's vote, and the houses of congresses voting record, along with any Congressional Record indexing information would be a very useful resource, and one that would give Wikipedia's flexibility and limitless nature (as opposed to a print encyclopedia) a real advantage.
Just having the data there is a valuable work as other contributors help grind the content down to a consensual view. Someone just has to get the ball rolling and if the original author does a great job, we'll get a solid article sooner than if we start with a crap one.
I'd say the only problem would be is that politicians and "neutral-point-of-view" don't usually go hand in hand, but you have a certain level of bias in any peice of writing.
Actually... (Score:3, Insightful)
Note also, the first edit, where the edit takes existing 'alleged' out of the picture.
Basically, the spin on the article pre-edit was things showing the invasion in a bad light were presented more like hard facts, while the elements that were put forth as justifications were relegated to mere allegations. The edit reversed the situation to make the anti-war points allegations and the supporting points factual.
The last bit of substantial edit looks like arguing in the body of the article. Nothing was removed, but what was added looked more appropriate for the Talk section rather than to end up with a paragraph that states something followed by a statement essentially declaring that paragraph to be irrelevant to the article subject.
Re:They're not that stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They're not that stupid (Score:2, Insightful)
I think that's an extremely poor assumption to make.
I don't imagine your average bureaucrat has any concept of what an IP address is.
Re:Whoa, whoa, whoa (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably, you can logically argue the injection of 'alleged' phrasing in any controversial point as making a statement more universally true rather than presenting it as true. However, the edit clearly demonstrated they only wanted to put alleged around points they didn't like, *and* wanted to remove the weakening 'alleged' term from a point they did like. Both the article pre-edit and post-edit seemed to be using alleged to weaken points that the editor didn't like.
The last bits didn't remove data, but read more like a debate that should be in the Talk section as to why a paragraph or two is irrelevant to the article. The post-edit seems confusing 'here is data point A, with respect to the invasion of Iraq. However, it had nothing to do with the invasion of Iraq'.
Particularly the first edit, though, points to some right-wing nut who happens to be in government, and not a conspiracy. I would imagine a conspiracy would have written more clean, less bitter sounding stuff.
Re:Whoa, whoa, whoa (Score:4, Insightful)
Not the kind of fact that is required for an enyclopedia. If you can't give an actual quote rather than a paraphrase, let alone an attribution to who exactly is saying it, then is bafrely qualifies as heresay, let alone the level of fact required for an enclyclopedia.
As an earlier poster commented, "Some say" is a technique pioneered by Fox News to inject the partisan opinion of the reporter (or actually the reporters employers) into what is supposed to be news. It has no place in an encyclopedia.
If the original was wrong in some way, that is no excuse to flip the bias the opposite way. Rather the error should have been corrected.
And drop the paranoid persecution complex, it's not helping your argument.
I think the last edit sums it up:
The last edit is propaganda. It's not the kind of hard fact an Encyclopedia is about. Again UNLESS there is some evidence that that was always their position.
Re:Use /. moderation on wikipedia (Score:5, Insightful)
What is needed is a /. style moderation and karma system so that any peer can review it without having to change it and indicate to other which are the best entries and editors.
And like here, it will help for egregious defacement, but will only ensure that the surviving articles match any communinty groupthink that may exist. Still better than a game of "who's the bigger asshole", but not an ultimate solution
[OT] DId the Bush Administration Lie on WMDs? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry to indulge the off-topic troll of the parent, but I'd like to state a common sense point lest other get sucked into this fallacious line of reasoning.
I agree that people have a tendency to accept things that confirm what they'd like (or have already chosen) to believe and ignore or doubt those that do not. This is a ubiquitous natural psychological phenomenon called confirmation bias, and it is not limited to any particular political group (though you might like to believe so). I further agree that like almost any matter of intelligence, the question of whether or not Iraq had WMDs was murky, and I believe many people with knowledge of intelligence believed in good faith that they did. The people selling the Iraq war didn't not lie about the existence of WMDs, but they did make false statements.
There were basically two sorts of falsehoods that were told in the run-up to the war. The first were specific pieces of evidence that were repeated to the public after it was widely known within the government that those pieces had been discredited (or cast into very serious doubt). These include statements about aluminum tubes, yellowcake uranium, and others. The second set of falsehoods were statements not about the evidence but about the level of certainty. When Bush administration officials said they believed Iraq had WMDs or that they had evidence of an Iraqi WMD program they were likely telling the truth. However, when, for example, Dick Cheney said, "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction," or President Bush said, "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised," or when Donald Rumsfeld said, "We know where the weapons are..." those were false statements. There remained doubt. There remained a lack of direct, verifiable, incontravertible evidence of the WMDs (e.g. pictures of the weapons, as in the Cuban Missile Crisis). As a result, those statements were simply and manifestly false.
Now, you can get into a whole semantic argument over whether they were lies or just false statements, based on whether they just misunderstood what they got from the intelligence community and so on. I think it's hard to make that argument given that in some instances (on the specific pieces of intel) people like Cheney were corrected by intelligence officials but continued to make the statements. In any case, from my perspective it's a moot point. Whether they made the false statements due to duplicity or just incompetence, the effect is the same, and it still marks them as unfit for their respective positions. There is no sufficient excuse for making false statements, that are either patently false or easily can be verified to be false, to the nation on a subject so dire as whether to go to war.
If the Bush administration had simply said, "we have intelligence that makes of believe Iraq has WMDs" and put forward what was, as far as they knew at the time, fairly reliable intelligence, then I would say they did not lie. They made a mistake, but, when it comes to intelligence, mistakes happen. But they did not do merely that; they included highly dubious or discredited evidence and stated that there was "no doubt". They made false statements to the nation, and I would say they lied.
So you subscribe to the "stupidity" theory? (Score:4, Insightful)
Given the hundreds of millions required to be spent to gain the Whitehouse... We have the CEOs or other high ranking executive officers of various multi-nationals involved. I'm not convinced that incompetence is the explanation. For this or any of their other actions.
Re:So you subscribe to the "stupidity" theory? (Score:5, Insightful)
For instance, on the one hand, the CIA is supposedly torturing people. On the other hand, the CIA is leaking info that the CIA is torturing people. Retard conspiracy theorists probably make this work in their heads by fantaszing that by leaking about its own bad actions, the CIA is diverting attention from some other, worse thing, like a Bigfoot-Alien alliance. Normal people think some people in the CIA didn't approve of the torture and leaked word of it (possibly illegally, but that's another subject) to the press.
Re:They're not that stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
Al Qaeda did have connections to Iraq, though not strong. The invasion of Iraq was never sold as being because Iraq and Al Qaeda had strong connections, despite what the history revisionists say. At the time of the invasion, Most Dems, Reps, and governments of the world believed Iraq had WMDs. Even Iraqi leadership believed it. Saddam Hussein was perpetrating a fraud on everyone because the belief of him having WMD was almost as good as actually having them. It should also be noted that a grand jury bent on charging the administration concerning the Valerie Plame "revelation" wasn't able to come up with any charges whatsoever except for a single perjury.
The CIA itself admitted the intelligence failures [www.cbc.ca]. You can't say that they were just covering because they've also been critical of the administration. The intelligence agencies of a lot of other countries also failed as they believed the same thing. As for Cheney's Halliburton connection, It's been shown [factcheck.org] that Cheney doesn't gain anything from Halliburton and hasn't since he left the company.
There were some obvious mistakes made during the invasion and occupation. Most of those have been corrected. The fact remains that no war of this caliber has had as few American casualties as this one [blogspot.com]. No war plan is perfect but this one is far from a grossly incompetent mismanagement.
Uh, yeah. Right.
I hate to break it to you, but the War on Terror is in more places than Afghanistan. I have 2 cousins that just got back from the African "front" in the War on Terror [washingtonpost.com]. If you want to read about successes in the War on Terror, check out what we're doing in Africa.
Re:Whoa, whoa, whoa (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually there is a wikipedia policy [wikipedia.org] against using the alleged modifier at all.
"alleged" is an editorial modifier; it renders the statement judgmental. In the first paragraph edit we go from "Alleged links... was mentioned..." to "Links were mentioned..."
The latter is literally correct. The media and the government mentioned links between Iraq and terrorism. An appropriate bit of balance would have been a citation to analysis of the recovered Iraqi government papers which showed, in retrospect, contacts but skepticism.
The edit also deleted a sentence quoting an editorial claiming that mentioning the links strained credulity. At the time that quote was written it was off the wall partisan. Only in retrospect is it clear how much the links were exaggerated. So the text sets a very biased tone.
Arguably the propaganda came not from the staffer's edits but from the original authors. Indeed now we have new propaganda being reported on slashdot about the evil congressional staffer. Hey wake up slashdot editors: the Inquirer is a left-wing publication and the article smears the right. Gee-wizz that can't be partisan spin in itself.
Bush et al were wrong but some people still need to get over their frenzied nonsense dogma about being lied into war. Being right was an accident.
Re:So you subscribe to the "stupidity" theory? (Score:3, Insightful)
As is your right. As for me, yes I subscribe to the quote you've posted (which I understand to be Hanlon's Razor), but I also feel my observations bear this out. I've looked at the goals nominated by the current US government, and the only thing I see them good at doing is spreading confusion and fog. This has, at times, suited their interests, and by turns it has not...yet the confusion persists, and nothing else.
So, yes. Incompetence of the highest order. Delusions of Vader-ness, perhaps, but I think you'd be stroking their egos to put them on a par with Dr. Evil.
(..and for those whose partisan ire is raised; I mean both the executive and legislative branches of this government, and I've held said opinion while Congress was under control of each party.)
Re:They're not that stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
This one person, and just a person who is using Wikipedia just like everyone else, is just a tiny cog in a little subassembly of a small piece of the "They" (meaning the US Government).
This whole damned thing is FUD. People in the US Government are allowed to edit Wikipedia, just like everyone else -- and the edits those people make are subject to the same peer review and revision, just like everyone else.
Just because one employee of the US Government made a bone-headed edit in Wikipedia does NOT make it "US Government Censors Wikipedia" (the 'article' title). It doesn't make it "backpeddling". It doesn't make it anything at all other than a bone-headed edit by someone who just happens to work for the US Government.
Re:They're not that stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
No, all that shows it that you have no sense of perspective. Lying about a personal matter which a court has no business asking is an entirely different thing than intentionally and with malice aforethought lying on a massive scale in order to build support for robbing the American people blind to pay to murder a bunch of innocent people for the purpose of increasing profits for a few companies.
Your inability to understand the vast scale of difference between those things demonstrates you to be utterly lacking in anything even resembling morals, ethics, or even basic sanity.
Re:They're not that stupid (Score:2, Insightful)
Not explicitly, but you have to be a fucking moron not to see how those allegations coming from the administration at that time fueled the hysteria for war.
Re:They're not that stupid (Score:2, Insightful)
Tin foil hat must be the new thinking cap, because someone calling Bush out on criminal activities seems like the least we could do to respect the memories of the dead.
Re:They're not that stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So you subscribe to the "stupidity" theory? (Score:1, Insightful)
And has obviously never had to explain PR, technology, or intelligence issues to an executive.
Executives aren't paid nor trained to be intelligent. They are paid and trained to keep one or more giant political machines working smoothly.
Remember: The Peter Principle.
Re:They're not that stupid (Score:1, Insightful)
As a Non American all I can say is that the only thing the people who lead your country have done is this: The American people appear Xenophobic, and with the exception of Canada, the UK, and Australia, the world has learned to hate you. This "War on Terror" or "War in Iraq" or whatever name you want to call it has vindicated the worlds belief in the Imperialistic nature of the US administration(s) and military. Basically the world over you are seen as bullies that march in and take over other people's countries. People who stick their nose unwontedly into other peoples business.
Mainstream media should be as transparent. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So you subscribe to the "stupidity" theory? (Score:2, Insightful)
Care to share an example? Because I sure can't see one. At best, some government agencies are less incompetent than others, and in some cases they're effectively the best thing going in their field, but usually that's only when they're the only ones allowed to do the job. (E.g., you could say that the U.S. does a decent job in its role of killing people and breaking things, but then again they're the only military around who receives that much money; who's to say what they'd be able to do if they were less incompetent? Same with most of the intelligence agencies.)
What you're saying seems like an unprovable conspiracy theory. 'When the government does something stupid, it's because they want it to appear that way.' It's like talking about dinosaurs to a creationist and having them tell you that God just put the fossils there in the rock to test the true believers, duh; or that electricity is just a facade created by the lightbulb fairies to conceal themselves. Unprovable, unnecessarily complex solutions are stupid and rarely correct.
I think there's a simpler solution here: the government is just barely competent enough to get the absolute bare minimum done -- basically, keeping the country from descending into anarchy -- on a daily basis. (And that's "the government" as a whole, including all the people who support it: the civil service by itself couldn't pour piss from a boot if the instructions were on the heel without a half-dozen contractors there to explain it.)
I think you give them way too much credit.
Re:So you subscribe to the "stupidity" theory? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So you subscribe to the "stupidity" theory? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:They're not that stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Use /. moderation on wikipedia (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So you subscribe to the "stupidity" theory? (Score:2, Insightful)
Dood, time for a dose of reality. First, there are numerous criminal conspiracies over the past hundred years where NO ONE came forward - maybe that's why they are called criminals. Comprehendo?
Check with the Association of Forensic Accountants and that association (I forget their exact title) of Fraud Examiners: turns out that in over 97% of cases where "normals" are involved along with criminals in corporate conspiracies - NO ONE ever comes foward. Data and facts - it's what us critically thinking humans grapple with!
Now, no one (other than yourself, perhaps) believes 9/11/01 was pulled off by the US government - simply elements within the government which had elaborate control and power over specific aspects of the DOD and Transportation...oh, people like the Office of the SecDef (Rumsfeld) and the Office of the Vice Presidency (Cheney).
Now, I'm unaware of your military experience - assuming you have any and I suspect you don't - but as one who has experience in military air/sea rescue and military command/control/communictions - there were far too many anomalies regarding those "crashes" at Skanksville and the Pentagon. Also, the probability of over 1,001 "coinicidences" occurring that day (to those of us who've had the higher maths) goes to inifite improbability. Including that coincidence of said 9/11/01 attacks occurring not only within the same timeframe, but the same exact hour as those three military exercises taking place that day and time: Vigilant Warrior, Vigilant Guardian and Global Guardian.
Now these three exercises involved the forward positioning of the majority of US fighter-interceptors to Alaska and Northern Canada (unheard of in US military history), and multiple hijackings and the third exercise involving the use of planes flying into the NRO building in Northern Virginia, a building scant miles from the jet runways of Dulles Airport - where one of those 4 airliners took off from. Also, you might research the backgrounds of those government contractors and federal appointees aboard those jets that day (two of said airliners don't show up in the FAA registry - which tracks all commercial flights - as they were special DOD-chartered flights - which have confidentiality and must take off at the proscribed time and to the proscribed place - although with a limited number of DOD people aboard - tickets are routinely sold to civilian pax).
Re:So you subscribe to the "stupidity" theory? (Score:2, Insightful)
Adam Smith
Perhaps you've heard of that fellow, Adam Smith???
Re:They're not that stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, there were allies in the Iraq invasion, we sent the majority of our people from their countries and we had a large open desert where we could see any threats coming from quite a distance away. The threat there isn't nearly as big as the threat in Korea and this is especially notable when China is taken into consideration.
As for the poker game. Your right, if Hussein believed what you just wrote would happen, he would have cooperated with inspectors and disclosed everything about his WMD program to the UN as they had demanded instead of giving them what he did. This is actually backed up with Saddam's own actions. Leading up to the war, the UN passed the resolution claiming there would be consequenses. We started flying increase amounts of armed drones, B1's and a few other aircraft over Iraq and even into the norther sections that we have stayed out of. Iraq did a 180 on their position and invited the weapons inspectors back in basically flooding them with information and saying we are cooperating, look.
Then France got scared that we would somehow notice their secrete oil deals with Iraq that were not only against the UN sanctions, but used the oil for food program as a cover. France then Stood up in the UN and said thy would veto any vote for war. I'm not sure if this was at the urging of Iraq or out of greed because they would lose out on the billions invested in the secret oil deals when Iraq was at war or if Saddam was ever removed. Now that Saddam thought he was untouchable, Iraq once again changed their positions.
It not only illustrates what you have said, but it shows how France is getting a free pass on all their underhanded deals it was involved with and how attempting to protect those deals ended up with the US escalating into a full blown war.
A little late (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes. That's why so many countries jumped at the chance to join the "coalition of the willing."
Even Iraqi leadership believed it.
Only that one really cool minister of misinformation. "The infidels will die on their swords!" That was classic.
It should also be noted that a grand jury bent on charging the administration concerning the Valerie Plame "revelation" wasn't able to come up with any charges whatsoever except for a single perjury.
First, this is an interesting aside, which has nothing at all to do with the lead-up to war, except that it was a leak concerning the wife of the guy who *told the US government the yellowcake documents were fake.* He did this before the war. He did this before President Bush cited those documents as an excuse to go to war.
The government had no excuse to continue to push those documents as evidence, yet they did. This, along with the revelation that the "foreign government intelligence" (intelligence documents from Britain) were also faked, indicate the President and his cabinet had every intention of misleading the population into war, no matter the cost, and without probable reason.
Your post makes me wonder: are you even from this universe? Have you stepped in through some portal from a strange alternate universe in which the President actually had a case for war? Or were you merely ignoring outside news sources during the lead-up to war?
supposedly? (Score:5, Insightful)
If a pretty white woman were waterboarded by 2 black cops in Atlanta, and died during the "interrogation", and then they packed the body in ice and faked the death certificate to say "heart problems," there would be no question in anyone's mind, least of all of the Attorney General or Vice President, that this constituted torture.
Our uncertainty as to what torture means is a sham--it's only torture because it's brown people who worship Allah and look sort of like towelheads. And everyone damn well knows that.
Re:They're not that stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's take this a piece at a time.
Yes, everyone....even Valeria Plame....even the French... thought Iraq had WMD. Hint: this is why they wanted the weapon inspectors to go into Iraq. And, unlike what the revisionists want us to believe, the weapon inspectors DID go into Iraq.
That doesn't discount the fact that Wilson's finding showed that Iraq COULDN'T and DIDN'T buy yellowcake. That also doesn't discount the fact that someone in the administration went after Wilson's wife as payback. (And let's face facts, that's about the lowest thing any President's admistration has ever done. Gone after someone's wife to get at someone...AND put the the lives of patriots at risk who were working in field ... no, not Plame, but all of the other people who used covers from the same companies.)
Alas, only a single charge of perjury was found on that. Damn, almost makes one wish we had independent investigators again.
That's true, we've never lost few casualities before for a war of this size.
Alas, that's not the war that was sold to us. That war would cost a mere $50 million and take under a week. The casualities we've had compared to a war of that size are astronomical (but I digress).
I'd hate to break it to you, but to any American (except those in Africa and other places) the War on Terror is Iraq. Look at the amounts we're spending in Iraq. Look at the numbers of troops in Iraq. Look at the number of causalities in Iraq. The less than 1% in Africa aren't the War on Terror. (I agree that progress is being made in places....I wish we'd spent more time/money/people/energy on those places than...but I'm not CIC).
I listened to a great number of people who had the irrational hatred of Clinton. All of them argued that it wasn't irrational...that they had specific reasons not to like the guy. (To paraphrase a Representative, who was on the floor of Congress at the time: that's not my President)
Shrug. People want to hate Clinton but demand me to respect Bush. Bite me. There are reasons (beyond what's posted here) to dislike Bush and the Republicans under Clinton made it socially acceptable.
Finally something I can agree with.
yes, YOU are revising history (Score:3, Insightful)
Many people thought that Iraq had WMD, as in they had a gut feeling. But you don't go to war based on a seat-of-your-pants gut feeling, unless you're a moron who considers yourself a "gut thinker."
I'm sure Clinton (either or both) and Gore both thought he did, but the fact remains that I was reading articles well before we invaded/liberated Iraq saying that high-level State Dept and CIA officials were saying that there was no evidence that Iraq had an active program.
UN weapons inspectors found nothing, even when they followed up on every lead the US Govt fed to them. Inspectors were looking for weapons, and found none. Blix had access to the disputed sites, and found nothing, even when the US "helped" with their wild-goose-chase hints. Blix was still inspecting when the USA threw the weapons inspectors out so they could start the war.
So who is revising history again?
Re:So you subscribe to the "stupidity" theory? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why shouldn't he keep his job? Sure, the ambiance is lacking a certain je ne sais quois, but even the best potential sex partners have to use the john. If you could pick up a gorgeous, brilliant, geek-girl in the Men's room, wouldn't you?