Journal neocon's Journal: Orson Scott Card 36
I'm gaining a lot of respect for Orson Scott Card, author of Ender's Game and other novels. Some time ago, I had pointed people here, in several posts, to this piece he wrote on Iraq and North Korea, and ellem and others have pointed out his recent piece, picked up by the Wall Street Journal, on the campaign of hate and fear being waged by the Democrats and many in the media against Bush and against the battle in Iraq.
Today, in his regular column over at The Ornery American, Card takes on the stunning lack of intellectual diversity in our allegedly diversity-happy campuses:
The reason our university faculties are full of people who accept hogwash in the name of political correctness is not because they are stupid or dishonest -- quite the contrary. It is simple human nature to accept as truth whatever the people around you unquestioningly believe. So P.C. dogmas that are outside of a faculty member's area of expertise are accepted without question simply because nobody else seems to be questioning them.
But this is precisely why litmus tests in hiring are so deeply harmful to the whole educational enterprise. It is not just students who need to be exposed to diversity of belief -- it is the faculty themselves who need people to disagree with them in order to stir their thoughts and bring out their best thinking.
Go read the whole thing -- he may be wrong about some things (he opposes the US decision to restrict where we spend our own Iraq reconstruction dollars, not (IMHO) adeequately considering that others are free to spend their reconstruction dollars in any nation they please), but he's quickly becoming one of my favorite registered Democrats.
Anthony Zinni (Score:2)
Re:Anthony Zinni (Score:2)
With due respect, if Zinni says what you quoted him as saying, then he is a liar, plain and simple. Just shy of five years, ago, Zinni stated the following in testimony to the Senate which is a matter of public record [senate.gov]:
Re:Anthony Zinni (Score:2)
But wait, there's more! In further public-record testimony [defenselink.mil], this time to the House Committee on Armed Services, on March 15, 2000, Zinni said:
no contradiction (Score:1)
Zinni's assertion is in agreement with Colin Powell's 24 February 2001 statement [state.gov] in Cairo, that Iraq, "has not developed any significa
Re:no contradiction (Score:2)
Mm-hmm. So in your opinion, when Zinni said ``some capabilities remain'' he actually meant ``no capabilities remain'', and when he said ``remaining stocks of chemical and biological munitions'', he meant ``no remaining stocks of chemical and biological munitions''?
While your reading comprehension is as creative as ever (right up with your reading ``per capita gdp'' as ``mean salary'' a few days back), that doesn't even pass the laugh test.
And that's not even mentioning that you chose not to respond
Re:no contradiction (Score:2)
Of course you managed to miss the last 6 months of Slashdot (where the US certainly hasn't been winning the invasion of Iraq).
And now, you're back once again. So now, you think that Saddam's capture is actually going to have an effect upon the constant number of people being killed due to the stupidity of idiots like you.
So you think you can pop your head back up out of the murky crap you've been hiding in for the last 6 months and start yacking about how invading Iraq was the right decisio
Re:no contradiction (Score:2)
Interesting. We're not winning the war in Iraq. This doesn't seem to agree with you. [dod.gov]
and
Indeed. (Score:2)
Well said. Funny how those who would rather fight terrorists in the downtown of our own cities than half way across the world (not to mention 50 million liberated in Iraq and Afghanistan) claim that they are picking the less expensive path.
Or, in other words, ``You think a few billion for the war in Iraq is expensive? Try paying to fill in the glowing hole where Chicago used to be.''
Re:no contradiction (Score:2)
Ah yes... Spoken like someone who's never had to sacrifice anything.
Although I appreciate your post, it doesn't really address much of anything I wrote about (especially since it was a flame pointedly directed at someone other than you). But thanks all the same.
You can cheerlead all you want, it doesn't change what
Re:no contradiction (Score:2)
On the contrary, `tres', it is you who gladly volunteered hundreds of thousands more Iraqis to pay the ultimate sacrifice, and who are whining about the fact that now they won't have to. You have no moral high ground here.
Re:no contradiction (Score:2)
What a presumptive prick. You've no idea who I am or what "sacrifices" have been made by me and my family. I'll take your statement as nothing but rhetoric used to make *YOU* feel good about your position.
It doesn't? What you "wrote" appeared to "address" some created notion that we weren't winning in Iraq. This notion, as I pointed out, certainly appears to be false. In case y
Re:no contradiction (Score:2)
Indeed -- `tres' is as long on hyperbolic claims, and as short on cites as ever in this thread. I think most of his bitterness comes from losing a bet [slashdot.org] a few months back (extra credit was awarded for his betting on Iraq just eight days before the fall of Baghdad).
attacks haven't slowed since Saddam's capture (Score:2)
Well, there's your unbiased source. I like this quote:
Re:attacks haven't slowed since Saddam's capture (Score:2)
Fascinating, isn't it, how the only article you find to cite compares only the two weeks immediately preceeding and following Saddam's capture to make its point.
Were Saddam captured in a vacuum, this might make (a little) sense. He wasn't, however -- he was captured in the midst of a massive wave of operations over a month and a half period which have indeed substantially reduced the number of attacks:
Re:attacks haven't slowed since Saddam's capture (Score:2)
I've no idea what you are trying to claim. The parent claimed that we weren't winning the war in Iraq. I provided links which disgreed with the parents claim. You've provided nothing that counters that claim and only addressed ONE of the articles I cite which you've decided is untrustworthy yet provide no material
Re:no contradiction (Score:2)
Mmm-hmm. And when you go to sleep at night, does calling people ``idiots'' make you feel better about the fact that if we had acted as you desired, the mass graves (300,000 dead found so far) would still be filling up? Does it quiet the screams of the children at Halabja who clawed their own faces off to escape the agony of the nerve gas? Do the humans tossed into industrial shredders become faceless to you because you called those who are happy that this torture and murder has ceased `idiots'?
Or, no
Re:no contradiction (Score:2)
Funny how when I read the words of Iraqis, they're not grateful for you destroying their country, then claiming to have "saved" them from themselves. They're not one bit grateful for you setting the fires of anarchy, then leaving them to burn.
Funny how you were so convinced 8
Re:no contradiction (Score:2)
That's the best you can come up with? Really? If we can't stop all suffering everywhere than we'd better not stop that suffering which we can easily put an end to? That's your moral high horse?
What a joke.
As for the gratitude of the Iraqi people, I dare say you haven't been paying much attention, now have you:
Re:no contradiction (Score:2)
"Imminent threat." You can say it, I know you can.
Why don't you try reading the words of Iraqis instead of using some lame, pre-canned, out-of-context statistics. If you were an Iraqi, and a Western reporter asks you how you feel about something, chances are you're going to tell them what they want to hear because you don't want to have your house raided in the middle of the night.
The fact sti
Re:no contradiction (Score:2)
Your ideas of ``facts'' are as pliable as ever, tres -- I have already linked [slashdot.org] in this thread to evidence of dozens of incidents of Iraq funding and training al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, and the Kay report [cia.gov] on Iraq's WMD programs -- which you clearly cannot be bothered to read -- details dozens of finds, including but not limited to:
Re:no contradiction (Score:2)
If I recall correctly, this term is being tossed around alot as originating from the President. It's funny. He never said that. What he said was:
And that was in the State of the Union Address 2003. In fact, the EARLIEST use of the phrase "imminent threat" came from Sen. Bob Graham, Democrat who said the
Re:no contradiction (Score:2)
Indeed -- I often challenge opponents of the administration to point out anywhere that Bush stated that there was an imminent threat. Then, after they hem and haw a little (and fail to come up with such a source, of course), I bring out the SotU quote you just posted, and watch them squirm. :-)
Re:no contradiction (Score:2)
You, I'm afraid, have also turned into a yawn.
So you too have clearance to spin whatever AM radio version of reality you like; I won't be here wasting my time on it.
Re:no contradiction (Score:2)
My point is that the idea of going to war with Iraq because it was an "imminent threat" came outside the current administration and appears to be currently used as a "spin" tool by those with an axe to grind against the current administration. You keep saying that the reasons given to go to war were "lies". How about enumerating them and provide sources as to how they were "lies"?
I would suggest that you are are the one spinning by even bringing up the p
imminence claims (Score:2)
Senator Nelson said [floridatoday.com] about 75 senators were told during a classified briefing immediatly prior to the vote authorizing force that Iraq had both biological and chemical weapons, notably anthrax, and it could deliver them to cities along the Eastern seaboard via unmanned aerial vehicles.
www.whit
Re:imminence claims (Score:2)
Interesting points here. We dont know (A) the source and (B) the full extent of the briefing the senators recieved. We also know the senators ALSO received reports that claimed Iraq wasn't such an immediate threat as noted in his "contradicted other intelligence reports" statement. It is quite possible
Re:imminence claims (Score:2)
Yes they did, earlier before the vote to authorize force.
Of course I am; how can you
Re:imminence claims (Score:2)
GOOD! So we are in apparent agreement that the Senators had been provided such information prior to their vote authorizing force. Yet they still authorized force. As I am unware (and I'm sure you are likewise unaware) of the full extent of the intellegence provided, how it was provided and the emphasis placed on it, we cannot POSSIBLY conclude there was a "willful and malicious disinformation campaign on the eve of Congress's vote authorizing for
Re:imminence claims (Score:2)
Well, so much for defending others' right to say what one disagrees with.
Re:imminence claims (Score:2)
Treason. Both are acts of treason. IF such information is being released deliberatly and in such as fashon as to deliberatly undermine the war efforts:
Sounds like "aid and comfort" to me. I highly do
not treason (Score:2)
Anyone who does anything for a political gain, whether it be Karl Rove for perhaps leaking the name and status of a CIA non-official cover WMD sentinel, or Bill Nelson for perhaps leaking a misleading part of a larger story about imminence claims regarding anthrax-laden Iraqi drones,
Re:not treason (Score:2)
You completely ignore the meat of my argument and instead focus on the one 'bone' I threw you. I'll address this later.
I've bent over backwards attempting to show you that the conclusions you are drawing make no sense based on the information available. I'll go over this again:
You claim that the current administration is guilty of the following: a "willful and malicious disinformation campaign on the eve of Congress's vote authorizing force".
You base this on a single comment by Se
Re:not treason (Score:2)
As for "treason," though, I think your opinion is oviously and demonstrably wrong. In the U.S., you are allowed to do almost anything with words to change the government. You are al
Re:not treason (Score:2)
As Jhon has already pointed out, the rate at which your argument shifts, combined with your Howard-Dean-like tendency to say remarkably dumb things ``off the cuff'' and then back away from them when they are pointed out (such as your confusion of per capita GDP with mean salary, your insistence that US gubernatorial elections are held in March, and so forth), clearly show that you are much more interested in `winning' an argument than in making truthful, or even consistent, statements.
That said, your st
Re:not treason (Score:2)
On the contrary, fighting "against the U.S.," is certainly an intentional betrayal in the eyes of any jury.
Fighting for the political advantage of either party is not, especially when it is obsious that the suspect has been a longstanding supporter of the party because he or she believes it is the best one to lead.