On Nov 6, 2004, at 12:04 AM, Gautam Mukunda wrote:
--- Warren Ockrassa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:At any cost.
You know as well as I do that the draft is coming back.
No, actually, I know far better than you do that it isn't. That's nonsense. It's not coming back.
Wow, way to prove your point. Three or possibly four denials in as many sentences. How erudite.
MIT is the home of American Security Studies,
ASS
and there isn't a single professor here who thinks it is, for example.
Ah, would these be the same professors who, in other colleges, are believed to be out of touch and living in fantasy worlds?
There isn't a single senior officer in the United States military of whom I am aware who thinks it is coming back, or wants it to come back.
Cite your references. (You ask it of me; here's the tat.)
The President of the United States and the Secretary of Defense have both said that there is no chance that it is coming back. Do you have any evidence that it is coming back?
No, just worries. Like how the military has said, quite badly, that they don't have enough recruits to handle all possible operations in the next five years. How are they to fill the body bags if not via draft?
I find it interesting that when you ask me to cite data and I do, you drop the discussion, and when you ask me to cite data and I point out that I don't have to because I was speaking conjecturally, you drop the discussion, and yet you seem to keep wanting to engage me.
Is it masochism?
No, it's being busy. I haven't replied to all of your posts that I intend to. I have several times challenged you - for example, your ludicrous ideas on economic development in the Third World - and you haven't even attempted to defend what you've said. When have you _ever_ cited data?
Vide:
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Did we get our butts kicked in the battle of Bhagdad?
Date: September 18, 2004 2:43:55 PM MST
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]On Sep 18, 2004, at 12:56 PM, Gautam Mukunda wrote:
--- Warren Ockrassa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:True, but in the 20th Century the practice became more common over time, not less so, and that makes the current lack -- utter lack -- of coverage fairly telling. Recall this is the same administration that deliberately cordons off any possible protesters into "free speech zones" so Bush doesn't have to see them.
Well, maybe it means we learn from experience.
Yes; we learned that Americans don't like seeing dead soldiers. We tend to prefer not to fight. But Bush II wanted this war. So it's in their best interests to hide the realities.
The "free speech zone" concept, by the way, is one most famously implemented by liberal universities, and put into place for the President under the Clinton Administration. There's nothing new about how the Bush Administration does it, particularly given the increased security threat it faces.
Good point about the universities; however the idea of speech "zones" isn't limited to just the liberal ones. Unless you view all universities as being liberal, which some do.
As for the Clinton free speech zone thing -- can you substantiate that?
It seems to me that the deliberate blind spots are abundant. It makes me suspicious. Do you think it's unreasonable of me to be suspicious of an administration that admittedly used underhanded techniques (like the Dems did) to try to get itself installed in DC, and then dropped such a wall of noncommunication about itself that virtually everything it does appears to be furtive dealings-in-the-dark? I mean, the way they behave *invites* suspicion.
No, but there's a difference between suspicion and paranoia. It's _possible_ that aliens are using microwave radiation to control my thought processes and that I should wear a tinfoil hat to prevent it. It's just not _likely_.
I agree. There's also a difference between suspicion and credulousness. It's _possible_ that people who used political influence to get into the national guard were not dodging the draft, but it's not _likely_. ;)
The point being that I don't believe I'm paranoid; I already indicated that I'd be as skeptical of Clinton if he acted the same way. I don't like people in power who don't want to be up-front about what they do. That's not paranoia; it's a healthy mistrust of authority.
I'm not agitating for full disclosure -- but darn it, there are some questions on the floor that have not been answered.
I believe lots of people other than myself have integrity; however, as has been pointed out and documented more times than should ever be necessary to mention, Bush II is demonstrably an administration that is very low on credibility.
Maybe to you. I would say that he has done no worse than most of his predecessors and better than his immediate predecessor. The liberal cocooning of people on this list never ceases to amuse me.
Catty personal obliquities aside, I've already said Clinton wasn't my golden boy either. And whether or not Bush has been more open than his predecessors, he's not being open and needs to be.
(It's comments such as the last -- "The liberal cocooning..." -- that get you heated invective. If you can't keep the tone detached and impersonal, you have to expect people to start hurling personal attacks back at you.)
From Ashcroft gutting Constitutional freedoms to Rumsfeld and the AG scandal to Cheney and Halliburton to missing WMDs to fudged Nat Guard records, the history of Bush II is littered with ample cause to question the credibility of every key player.
In other words you've got: 1) A paranoid fantasy
A fact, Gautam. Or are you unaware of USA PATRIOT? Of Guantanamo and the decision that prisoners there will not get due process?
Cite:
"During his watch as the country's highest law enforcement officer and the first face of Bush's "war on terrorism," Ashcroft has arrested and locked up hundreds of individuals, most of whom have been held for weeks or months without charges and, in some cases according to critics, whose only identifiable connection to any terrorist organization appears to lie in the color of their skin, their religious affiliation or the origin of their ancestors."
<http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:oX2OT2qqXCAJ:www.pfaw.org/pfaw/ dfiles/file_232.pdf+john+ashcroft+constitution&hl=en>
-- the above points to a Googled HTML version of a PDF released by People for the American Way, wherein that quote resides.
Cite:
"In further efforts to protect Americans, the Bush Administration has claimed in court the ability to designate U.S. citizens as "enemy combatants" and hold them indefinitely without trial and without access to counsel. In this claim, they say the government may designate any American as an "enemy combatant" without issuing any evidence supporting the designation."
<http://www.bushpresident2004.com/ashcroft.htm>
-- arguably partisan, but the article wherein the foregoing quote resides has a long list of supporting citations following.
There's an interesting page of decisions relevant to Ashcroft as well:
<http://news.findlaw.com/newsmakers/john.ashcroft.html>
On this page two of the five decisions summarized show Ashcroft's ideas to be unconstitutional.
This ain't a paranoid fantasy.
2) The AG scandal which was revealed _by the Administration_, which, had it chosen to cover it up, probably still wouldn't have made the press
It was *not* revealed by the administration. As you so accurately put it in a previous note:
"Abu Ghraib wasn't broken by intrepid investigative reporters. It was broken because individual soldiers had the integrity to report that something was going on, and it moved up the chain."
Please try to keep your current arguments consistent with your previous assertions.
3) Lots of accusations on about the level of the black helicopters believed in by the militias
I have no idea what you think you're referring to here. If this is in reference to Halliburton and Cheney, I was thinking more of the rather shady legal dealings that have been going on -- such as the mysterious "overcharge" of the military by Halliburton for needed supplies -- and the interesting way in which Cheney's pet company just happens to be getting a lot of profiteering contracts.
Cite:
"[Halliburton], which is based in Houston, is now the biggest private contractor for American forces in Iraq; it has received contracts worth some eleven billion dollars for its work there."
<http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040216fa_fact>
-- oh no, the liberal media again. ;)
Cite:
"The March 2003 Pentagon e-mail says action on a no-bid Halliburton contract to rebuild Iraq's oil industry was "coordinated" with Cheney's office."
<http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,121480,00.html>
-- oh no, the liberal ... uh, never mind.
4) You mean the faked ones distributed by CBS News?
No, I mean the legitimate questions that were raised and continue to be asked regarding Bush's record, and the documents with provenance that exist and appear to have some pretty substantial holes in them regarding his service record. I've been totally ignoring CBS's fustercluck precisely because it is such a ... well, quagmire of fallacy.
There was no coverup? There was a total lack of mention of *anything* going on in AG at *all*. What is that if not a coverup? As you say it took *insiders* to break the story -- certainly the military was carefully keeping news of its adventures there from the media.
Except, you know, the public reports made by the Pentagon. Which were the ones that alerted the press.
No, it was the photos leaking digitally from the net that first got everyone's attention.
Cite (note in the following that the Red Cross is ignored; also I removed some interstitial events):
"April - May 2003
The International Red Cross and several human rights groups complain that American troops have been mistreating Iraqi prisoners.
"Jan. 13, 2004
A military policeman presents army investigators with a computer disk containing graphic photographs depicting the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.
"Jan. 16, 2004
Central Command issues a brief press release announcing an investigation into the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners.
"April 28, 2004
The CBS news magazine program 60 Minutes II broadcasts pictures that show leering American soldiers taunting naked Iraqi prisoners who are forced to assume humiliating poses."
<http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/iraq/abughraib_timeline.html>
-- darn those Canadians!
Cite (I removed some interstitial events):
"2004
"Jan. 13: Army Spc. Joseph M. Darby, an MP with the 800th at Abu Ghraib, leaves a disc with photographs of prisoner abuse on the bed of a military investigator.
"Jan. 14: Army launches criminal investigation of Abu Ghraib abuses.
"Jan. 16: Central Command issues one-paragraph news release announcing investigation of "incidents of detainee abuse" at unspecified U.S. prison in Iraq.
"Early February:Rumsfeld and Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, brief President Bush on the prison abuse investigations.
"April 28: CBS airs the photos, setting off an international outcry. Bush, Rumsfeld and Meyers say this is the first time they have seen any of the photographs"
<http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-05-09-timeline- abuse_x.htm>
-- possibly the most in-depth thing _USA Today_ ever printed. ;)
That's some coverup - officially telling everyone in the world what you did.
If you read the citations above, you'll see that in fact it was the airing of the photos on 60 Minutes II that caused the coverup to blow. Details were *not* forthcoming prior to the broadcast.
It looks like a duck, it waddles like a duck and it quacks like a duck.
As Lois Bujold wonderfully wrote, "You can be _told_ the truth, but if you refuse to believe it, you'll never know it."
Indeed.
I doubt that anything seriously like what was reported actually happened.
In other words, you went on about stuff that you _didn't believe_ in order to attack the Bush Administration?
No, Gautam. I went on about things that I know *did* happen to indicate why I am deeply suspicious of Bush II and its motives, and to add strength to my general contention that -- while I doubt the reports of massive casualties in Iraq -- I cannot utterly dismiss them.
You Dan Rather writing under a pseudonym, by any chance?
Is your argument really so weak that all you can prop it up with is these silly little asides you sprinkle into your notes? That's plain sad, man.
-- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress "The Seven-Year Mirror" Excerpt at http://www.nightwares.com/books/Flat_Out.pdf
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Ahem. Now defend your allegation, to wit:
I have several times challenged you - for example, your ludicrous ideas on economic development in the Third World - and you haven't even attempted to defend what you've said.
What "ludicrous ideas" might you be referencing?
Warren Ockrassa | Publisher/Editor | nightwares Books [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://books.nightwares.com/
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