Where debating everything under the sun is only the beginning

On a more general note I do feel sorry for you folk across the water having the Fox News Channel which is awful.

[The quote-marks are meant to merely make you consider the expression an idiom with which you are familiar…  ]

Surprise! It turns out that there’s something to be said for having the brother of a failed president make his own run for the White House. Thanks to Jeb Bush, we may finally have the frank discussion of the Iraq invasion we should have had a decade ago.

But many influential people — not just Mr. Bush — would prefer that we not have that discussion. There’s a palpable sense right now of the political and media elite trying to draw a line under the subject. Yes, the narrative goes, we now know that invading Iraq was a terrible mistake, and it’s about time that everyone admits it. Now let’s move on.

Well, let’s not — because that’s a false narrative, and everyone who was involved in the debate over the war knows that it’s false. The Iraq war wasn’t an innocent mistake, a venture undertaken on the basis of intelligence that turned out to be wrong. America invaded Iraq because the Bush administration wanted a war. The public justifications for the invasion were nothing but pretexts, and falsified pretexts at that. We were, in a fundamental sense, lied into war.

The fraudulence of the case for war was actually obvious even at the time: the ever-shifting arguments for an unchanging goal were a dead giveaway. So were the word games — the talk about W.M.D that conflated chemical weapons (which many people did think Saddam had) with nukes, the constant insinuations that Iraq was somehow behind 9/11.

And at this point we have plenty of evidence to confirm everything the war’s opponents were saying. We now know, for example, that on 9/11 itself — literally before the dust had settled — Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense, was already plotting war against a regime that had nothing to do with the terrorist attack. “Judge whether good enough [to] hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] ...sweep it all up things related and not”; so read notes taken by Mr. Rumsfeld’s aide.

This was, in short, a war the White House wanted, and all of the supposed mistakes that, as Jeb puts it, “were made” by someone unnamed actually flowed from this underlying desire. Did the intelligence agencies wrongly conclude that Iraq had chemical weapons and a nuclear program? That’s because they were under intense pressure to justify the war. Did prewar assessments vastly understate the difficulty and cost of occupation? That’s because the war party didn’t want to hear anything that might raise doubts about the rush to invade. Indeed, the Army’s chief of staff was effectively fired for questioning claims that the occupation phase would be cheap and easy.

Why did they want a war? That’s a harder question to answer. Some of the warmongers believed that deploying shock and awe in Iraq would enhance American power and influence around the world. Some saw Iraq as a sort of pilot project, preparation for a series of regime changes. And it’s hard to avoid the suspicion that there was a strong element of wagging the dog, of using military triumph to strengthen the Republican brand at home.

Whatever the precise motives, the result was a very dark chapter in American history. Once again: We were lied into war.

Now, you can understand why many political and media figures would prefer not to talk about any of this. Some of them, I suppose, may have been duped: may have fallen for the obvious lies, which doesn’t say much about their judgment. More, I suspect, were complicit: they realized that the official case for war was a pretext, but had their own reasons for wanting a war, or, alternatively, allowed themselves to be intimidated into going along. For there was a definite climate of fear among politicians and pundits in 2002 and 2003, one in which criticizing the push for war looked very much like a career killer.

On top of these personal motives, our news media in general have a hard time coping with policy dishonesty. Reporters are reluctant to call politicians on their lies, even when these involve mundane issues like budget numbers, for fear of seeming partisan. In fact, the bigger the lie, the clearer it is that major political figures are engaged in outright fraud, the more hesitant the reporting. And it doesn’t get much bigger — indeed, more or less criminal — than lying America into war.

On top of these personal motives, our news media in general have a hard time coping with policy dishonesty. Reporters are reluctant to call politicians on their lies, even when these involve mundane issues like budget numbers, for fear of seeming partisan. In fact, the bigger the lie, the clearer it is that major political figures are engaged in outright fraud, the more hesitant the reporting.

The Obama administration (and the Clinton administration before it…) give the lie to this: The Press only feel this way about Democrat regimes… Their side, you know!

Apparently, "rationality" needs quotation marks for you: You'd not hold an opinion that goes against the grain… (Or is it just one that I hold? Probably not: You don't seem capable of understanding my positions, on anything…)

ersi, I quote and cite sources whose past performances and veracity have been proven to be justified and just. Would you prefer me to give dolts, prevaricators and villains equal time?
Why?
Is that the kind of world you're familiar with?

I have 3 British news channels and 2 foreign ones to fall back on but we haave nothing like that daft Fox like you have. However in a land of mas nut jobs to be expected.

Combined, Fox News, CNN and MSNBC averaged 1.8 million viewers total-day (down 5% from 2013) and 2.85 million in primetime (down 4%). Among adults 25-54, they were down 8% in total-day and 5% in primetime.

Russian President Vladimir Putin only took up ice skating a few years ago, but that didn't stop the 62-year-old scoring a handful of goals in an all-star hockey match comprising of former hockey stars, businessmen and politicians over the weekend.

Putin scored eight goals at the gala hockey match in Sochi on Saturday — more than any other player — to lead his "Stars of the Night Hockey League (NHL)" team to an 18-6 victory over his opponents "The NHL Team."

The president was joined by a host of former Soviet and Russian stars including Alexander Yakushev, Sergei Makarov and Vyacheslav Fetisov. Billionaire businessmen Gennady Timchenko and brothers Arkady and Boris Rotenberg, close associates of the Russian president, also played in the match.

At first if you could kindly explain how […]

Quote from: ersi on 2015-05-20, 05:46:36

At first if you could kindly explain how […]

You could note — no, I guess you couldn't. Oh, well. I certainly understand your concerned focus upon the Baltics and Eurasia. But I don't share it, despite Estonia being a NATO member… Likewise, you should understand my concerned focus upon the U.S., about which you know little…

Oh. You must mean your "Your political position is easily understood: Anything anti-Dem is good for you." You seem to be yet another one of those folk for whom there is only thesis, antithesis and (perhaps…) synthesis. That's very convenient, for academics — who just argue with each other.

But, on the contrary, any Dem who comes close to agreeing with me on principle and makes an honest attempt to accommodate policy to such has my tacit support!

But you grew up with a one-party system; so, our experiences are quite different. How are you liking your new-found "freedom"?

One must have a system, you know?

You think SU (how ominously similar to US this acronym is!) was a one-party system, but it went through a bunch of purges of "opposition" in its early decades, the political elite always had political "wings", and the people were always pretty rational and unfanatical about the regime. The only thing fanatical was the propaganda of the regime itself.

your system has been Dem bad, Repub good. This is not even a system.

There have been members of the Democratic Party that I've supported; but if you're only looking for in-consistancy, you won't find it: You want me to say something like "I support my comrade, despite disagreeing with him!"

What most Democratic candidates profess is anathema… (There are exceptions.) Would you hnave me embrace evil -just a little bit- to show how "liberal" I am?

I'm glad your country has once again achieved independence. I wish you well. (Sorry, 'bout you're losing your government job. Also, sorry about your education leading you to think you deserved better than you can nowadays get…) Do something well!

What are you doing for a living, nowadays?

So there, Dems are evil (with some unidentified exceptions). Which is the point I have been making.

Media analysis? That's either public opinion polls or advertising, isn't it? 

Well, ersi: Are you now or have you ever been in the employ of the CIA?

So, you're a Snowden/Assange conspiracy theory convert now?