"The same what is going on in the rest of the world?"Civilians dieing.
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George W. Bush
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Where do you get your views on this war and the state of America? Do you watch all the news channels and read all the papers, local, national and international, and then make a decision based on your rational reasoning? Or do you ignore all of the media because of their "agendas" and make your decisions based on what you've heard and what you've been told by the government?
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I take it all into consideration...as with any piece of info you have to consider the source. A bit of experience in this goes a long way...which is why it's tough for younger folk to get clear sight of the truth (especially in today's day and age). You don't view your world the same way you did when you were 13...you won't when you're 30, either. And so on.
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But how can you tell which reports are real, which are exagurated and which are flat out lies? What should be considered about a source? How does the experience of being older help? Does it not just mean that you've been lied to for longer? Manipulated for longer? Been conditioned to believe certain things and not believe others over the course of a much longer time span?You told us of an event that you claim to have appeared on the news for only 20 minutes and then was never again discussed. You said that some Iraqi officials have come out and said they have seen the Weapons of Mass Destruction, but there are other claims that defectors were told by the US government to say that they have seen them. Who should we believe? How can we decide? Should we trust the people who come out with this information just as their book is being published?
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I saw on the news this morning that Bush has made comparisons between the current situation in Iraq and the Vietnam war. What do you make of that?
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You start by getting to know yourself...your true self. Know the true reasons as to why you have the feelings you do about things, and acknowledge how those feelings effect your opinions about certain issues. We all have our biases created by our feelings...but not all of us acknowledge them, and so can continue to be unwhittingly influenced by them. Only when we can see ourselves clearly can we really be able to see others clearly. Denial of issues blocks our ability to see ourselves clearly...we need to be able to be honest with ourselves. Then, and only then, can we begin to see patterns in the actions of people and how they repeat over and over again throughout history.The vast majority of those who come to power are doing so because of their own interests...not those of others. But many of them are able to help others in an altruistic fashion while accomplishing their own personal agendas. We need to be able to see all sides of the coin...not just the one the media (or anybody else) would prefer us to see. Choosing to see only one side of the coin suggests that a person doesn't know themself well enough to realize that they have an emotional reason for not wanting to see the other side of the coin...even if that reason is only to fit in with others and the perceieved "popular opinion".
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I don't know...I didn't see the news this morning. I think there is little similarity...with the exception of the public's general reaction to the whole thing.
You got a link?
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OK, then in a matter such as the Military Commissions Act, in your opinion, what are the two sides of the coin that people should be considering?
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You first...but be aware that I was using the concept of two sides of a coin as an analogy. There often is more than just two sides...maybe three, four, five, etc. According to the media, there is only ever one side. Theirs.
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> A bit of experience in this goes a long way.
I'm glad you think you're in a place where you can discern objective truth, whereas your political opponents can't. There is such thing as objective truth, isn't there? I mean, there is some integer number of Iraqi civillians who die every day, isn't there? And it is true that Iraqis have an opinion on whether U.S. should maintain their presence in Iraq, right?
You are living in a world of vast conspiracies, and you think you have the knowledge and self-awareness to cut through the bullshit. In fact, you're a rigid ideologue. How you are unable to see that is very hard to understand.
The Fox News Channel and conservative talk radio might not have covered the story, but Thomas Friedman wrote a column in the New York Times comparing the current situation in Iraq to the Tet Offensive. Here's his column from 18 October 2006:
In reply to:
Barney and Baghdad
In the competition for the biggest "October surprise" of the 2006 election cycle, it might seem hard to top North Korea's nuclear test. But I'd suggest that in time we'll come to see the events unfolding --- or rather, unraveling --- in Iraq today as the real October surprise, because what we're seeing there seems like the jihadist equivalent of the Tet offensive.
For those of you too young to remember, the Tet offensive was the series of attacks undertaken by the Vietcong and North Vietnamese armies between Jan. 30, 1968 --- the start of the Lunar New Year --- and June 1969. Although the Vietcong and Hanoi were badly mauled during Tet, they delivered, through the media, such a psychological blow to U.S. hopes of "winning" in Vietnam that Tet is widely credited with eroding support for President Johnson and driving him to withdraw as a candidate for re-election.
Total U.S. troop deaths in Iraq this month have reached at least 53, putting October on a path to be the third deadliest month of the entire war for the U.S. military. Iraqis are being killed at a rate of 100 per day now. The country has descended into such a Hobbesian state that even Saddam called on Iraqis from his prison cell to stop killing each other. He told insurgents, "Remember you are God's soldiers and, therefore, you must show genuine forgiveness and put aside revenge over the spilled blood of your sons and brothers." When Saddam is urging calm, you know things have hit a new low.
The violence in Iraq is not as coordinated as in Vietnam. You have small gangs of Sunnis and Shiites killing each other in sectarian clashes, Baathists and jihadists attacking U.S. and Iraqi forces in more organized efforts, Sunnis fighting with Kurds over turf in northern Iraq, and, on top of it all, rampant crime. Therefore, it's hard to identify a specific military order to step up the violence in Iraq, as in Tet.
But while there may be no single hand coordinating the upsurge in violence in Iraq, enough people seem to be deliberately stoking the fires there before our election that the parallel with Tet is not inappropriate. The jihadists want to sow so much havoc that Bush supporters will be defeated in the midterms and the president will face a revolt from his own party, as well as from Democrats, if he does not begin a pullout from Iraq.
The jihadists follow our politics much more closely than people realize. A friend at the Pentagon just sent me a post by the "Global Islamic Media Front" carried by the jihadist Web site Ana al-Muslim on Aug. 11. It begins: "The people of jihad need to carry out a media war that is parallel to the military war and exert all possible efforts to wage it successfully. This is because we can observe the effect that the media have on nations to make them either support or reject an issue."
It then explains that for jihadist videos of attacks on Americans to have the biggest impact, "Some persons will be needed who are proficient in the use of computer graphics including Photoshop, 3D Studio Max, or other programs that the people of jihad will need to design ... video clips about the operations."
Finally, the Web site suggests that jihadists flood e-mail and video of their operations to "chat rooms," "television channels," and to "famous U.S. authors who have public e-mail addresses ... such as Friedman, Chomsky, Fukuyama, Huntington and others." This is the first time I've ever been on the same mailing list with Noam Chomsky.
It would be depressing to see the jihadists influence our politics with a Tet-like media/war frenzy. But there are only two reasons now for the U.S. to remain in Iraq: because it thinks that staying will make things better or that leaving will make things drastically worse. Alas, it is increasingly hard to see how our presence is making things better. Iraq, under our nose, is breaking apart into so many little pieces that no political solution seems to be in the offing, because no Iraqi leader can deliver his faction anymore --- and there does not seem to be an Iraqi center capable of coming together. While leaving would no doubt exacerbate the civil war, staying in Iraq indefinitely to prevent even more Shiites and Sunnis from killing one another is not going to fly with the U.S. public much longer.
Bob Woodward quoted President Bush as saying that he will not leave Iraq, even if the only ones still supporting him are his wife, Laura, and his dog Barney. If the jihadist Tet offensive continues gaining momentum, Mr. Bush may be left with just Barney.
According to this AP article in the Washington Post:
In reply to:
In an interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos, the president said a New York Times column by Thomas Friedman might be correct in drawing that analogy.
"He could be right," the president said. "There's certainly a stepped-up level of violence, and we're heading into an election."
Tet, which began in early 1968 and is seen by many as a turning point in the Vietnam war, did serious damage to President Lyndon B. Johnson's public support. Two months after the offensive began, he announced he would not seek a full, second term in the White House.
