Exactly after all the conspiracy theorists were only right about
- Iraq WMDs
- MkUltra
- The Crack Epidemic
- Watergate
- Glados
- Paperclip
- Robert Kennedy car crash
- Epstien
But they just got lucky a bunch.
- Iraq WMDs
- MkUltra
- The Crack Epidemic
- Watergate
- Glados
- Paperclip
- Robert Kennedy car crash
- Epstien
But they just got lucky a bunch.
2. For the ones you listed, were there specific and credible "conspiracy theories" that existed prior to them being discovered/confirmed? Or were there only vague theories of "government doing something shady"?
The set of possible conspiracy theories is infinite. The set believed by any one 'conspiracy theorist' is likely to be far smaller. Lumping in hollow earth, lizardpeople, flatearther, aliens etc with 'government lies about wars' is always a cynical move to avoid legitimate criticism and spread propaganda.
The one I lived through, Iraq WMDs, wasnt a conspiracy theory at the time. All credible evidence said there were no WMDs. Bush and Cheney lied with no evidence. Everyone that was not a partisan Republican called them out on their flimsy pretext. That's why we had the largest antiwar protests ever (while conservatives ridiculed us).
Another was that the collapse of the world trade center towers was due to planted explosive charges. That one has been roundly refuted.
Of course, people continue to believe what that will, but there's a pretty big gap in the amount of evidence behind those theories and confirmed conspiracies.
Hack those numbers.
https://www.nist.gov/pao/questions-and-answers-about-nist-wt...
It's not just unsubstantiated, it's flatly wrong on its face. Bush had been in office less than 9 months. He wasn't anywhere close to re-election. This is when the next race typically didn't ramp up until the year of the election.
His approval was relatively stable and above 50%. You can see what it looked like if you scroll down from this link: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/
I don't care if you pay attention to the conspiracy theorists or not. But please stop propagating conspiracy BS as if it were true.
To be fair, his approval was continually dropping when he decided to invade Iraq on claims of WMD, but that was well after 9/11 and going into Afghanistan.
No, most of this was ignored by mainstream US journalists, and the mainstream journalists who still insisted on talking about them were pushed out of the mainstream. Journalists like Judith Miller at the notoriously conservative NYT (a woman who was made to take the blame for everything for some reason) were the face of the mainstream.
The only distinction that makes journalism "mainstream," at least in the US, is a running mutual relationship with the administration and intelligence agencies. Not circulation, not profitability, not influence, not truthfulness of reporting, nor quality of reporting. "Mainstream" outlets float government narratives crediting anonymous sources or sources delivered to the outlet on a platter. They also consult with the government and intelligence agencies before publishing stories, and will avoid entire subjects or questions on request. They do this in exchange for accurate inside information and scoops, or external benefits for the owners of the outlets.
The vast majority of Democrats energetically supported the WMD lie, although it was false on its face based on the reports of the inspectors, and the fact that the documents used to justify it were obvious frauds ("The Dirty Dossier"). The rest was from "Curveball" who was an obvious fraud with an ulterior motive from the first encounter, and who no one ever bothered to corroborate, but who offered what the people who sell war material (and the politicians they fund) were buying.
Democrats ridiculed us, too. All but one of them voted for the war, and they still marginalize her for it.
This personal identification with Democrats among certain people seems to wash away all of their actual votes and rhetoric. Every problem becomes about how evil Republicans are, and no rational reason is ever offered for that evil, because all of the rational reasons (corruption, ambition) apply as easily to their Democratic counterparts. I found a name for those people during the Trump impeachment: "emoluments libs." They were the people who insisted that the Democrats weren't impeaching on emoluments because they weren't brave enough and weren't really trying, rather than because any investigation into Trump taking advantage of his office for cash would in the end implicate most of Congress to a greater extent than Trump, who was an outsider in a bad position to make the kind of money that old masters get up to.
The idea that Tony Blair is the face of conservatism is laughable. Obama taking over the wars was ideal for people who made money from them, because they had become too closely associated with US religious warriors who were trying to put clothes on naked statues. You needed an Obama to indemnify the worldwide black site torture program and the intentional destruction of the evidence of it, to continue PATRIOT and to indemnify the companies that surveilled their customers, and to continue to prosecute those wars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball_(informant)
Iraq War's Authorization by Congress Is Still on the Books and Dangerously Open-Ended
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/09/28/iraq-war-aumf-authority...
Where are you getting this information from?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37875198 has the actual voting record. Senate Democrats were 57-43 in favor but 2:1 against in the House.
Are you confusing it with Afghanistan? A lot of people seem to do that these days, though I didn't look up the voting record for that conflict.
Republicans had a total of 7 votes against attacking Iraq - in both houses.
Here's the voting record for the authorization for use of force in Iraq:
House: For: 296 (R:215, D:81), Against: 133 (R:6, D:126, I:1) [0]
Senate: For: 77 (R: 48, D:29) , Against: 23 (R:1 , D:21, I1) [1]
Yes, there was more opposition from members of the Democratic Party, but there's quite a lot of support there from Dems.
[0] https://clerk.house.gov/evs/2002/roll455.xml
[1] https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1...
Epstein is a particular howler because the QAnon set loudly proclaiming triumph about that was entirely focused on phantom satanic pedophile cults with the Democratic Party while Epstein was never even on their radar.
Yes, they just got lucky a bunch.
Probably you're unaware of this because your conception of a conspiracy theorist and what they believe or argue has been handed to you by mass media.
Iraq WMD's is also wrong and case of what happens when conspiracy theorists get a hold of the US government. Most countries and the US house did not accept the WMD conspiracy that immediately turned out to be untrue as most conspiracies do. Now the conspiracy theorists are that it was all done for oil, which is also a blatantly dumb characterization.
The OIG (Office of Inspector General) report into "THE CIA-CONTRA-CRACK COCAINE CONTROVERSY" (December, 1997)
https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/special/9...
didn't touch the bedrock involvement of the CIA-Contra support underpinning the magnitude increase and near literal flooding of cocaine powder into the USofA (because that connection had already been "extensively reviewed in previous inquiries by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Subcommittee on Narcotics, Terrorism and International Operations; the State Department; the DEA; and the CIA.")
That, however, is enough on it's own to make the case that the CIA was (indirectly) responsible - had the volume not increased so substantially and had the price not dropped so dramatically there would never had been any driver to make a more addictive by product so readily available.
The rest of the OIG report is volumous but weak - there is no evidence because various targets "fell between the cracks", there was no task force because the agent who suggested one had a case of "her supervisors did not take her request seriously because she was a female agent." and not "because there was pressure to cover up".
These are not great reasons that the evidence is lacking because deeper investigations were not held, and they don't exclude unseen pressure to not look further.