Comment by at-fates-hands | Hacker News Reader

Comment by at-fates-hands | Hacker News Reader

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>>> It's a shame that they had to pick a Bush crony.

Another great example of how partisanship and shitty double standards have ruined our country. The fact is, the vote to invade Iraq was a bi-partisan vote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Resolution_to_Authorize_t...

"Introduced in Congress on October 2, 2002, in conjunction with the Administration's proposals,[2][7] H.J.Res. 114 passed the House of Representatives on Thursday afternoon at 3:05 p.m. EDT on October 10, 2002, by a vote of 296-133,[8] and passed the Senate after midnight early Friday morning, at 12:50 a.m. EDT on October 11, 2002, by a vote of 77-23.[9] It was signed into law as Pub.L. 107–243 by President Bush on October 16, 2002."

82 Democrats in the house and 29 in the Senate voted for the resolution. If you're against Rice for her actions leading up the war, then maybe you should take some action against the prominent Democrats who voted for the resolution as well:

Chuck Schumer

Joe Biden

Hilary Clinton

John Kerry

Harry Reid

The fact is, BOTH parties are to blame for Iraq. Too bad most Liberals just like to point the finger at Bush and his administration, when in fact there were plenty of Democrats to blame as well. Pretty sure you're not going to boycott any company if one of the democrats listed above lands on a board somewhere are you?

You seem to have forgotten that the Bush administration knowingly lied about the intentions and capabilities of Saddam Hussein in order to gain support for the war.

FactCheck.org: Bush's "16 Words" on Iraq & Uranium: He May Have Been Wrong But He Wasn't Lying

Two intelligence investigations show Bush had plenty of reason to believe what he said in his 2003 State of the Union Address.

http://archive.is/vAWQa#selection-283.0-300.0

Don't let facts get in your way though.

That article was written in 2004, before anybody knew the extent of the hubris. We've learned a lot since then. The article itself states:

The final word on the 16 words may have to await history's judgment.

factchecker is right. they didn't "lie." as numerous insiders have written (paul oneil, richard clarke), they were preoccupied with invading iraq and cherry picked dubious intelligence that supported their claims... like curveball, the niger uranium, etc.

The Bush administration advocated for war by hyping the case ("smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud") and feeding the public selective information. They knew that a lot of these claims (including the 16 words) were from questionable sources, but they pushed them on the public anyway, while downplaying the evidence to the contrary. Perhaps that's not literally a "lie," but its certainly dishonest, especially given that those claims, in fact, ended up being untrue.

Oh please.

The CIA operative Valery Plame was crucified because her husband (a diplomat) that investigated the yellow cake claim in Africa wrote about how it was a sham drummed up for the war.

"He didn't technically lie" - Sure he did. They knew what the truth was. They knew they needed an event to galvanize American support for action in the middle east. They knew what they were doing with how they worded the "War on Terror" lumping in Saddam with fucking Osama. When 75% of Americans think Saddam had something to do with 911, we are way past just cherry picking stats. We had psychopaths that were concurrently trying to extend American power and their own gain invade a country that had very high strategic interest.

I'm not even partisan about this. Most of the American politicians that I like are Republicans. This is complete horse shit.

They didn't need an event. It's pretty well known that they had planned to invade Iraq for quite a while prior to 9/11. The reasons we invaded Iraq had little to do with 9/11.

In a not far off alternate universe, Clinton would have invaded Iraq in his administration. His finger was always on the trigger.

They fooled me. I voted for Bush in 2000; I supported the war after the State of the Union address. I maintained that we would find the weapons of mass destruction, long after very many Americans were growing dubious.

Then Rumsfeld said they wouldn't find the WMDs. Then he tried to claim that the war was never about WMDs.

At that point I knew I had been 'had' by a completely (intellectually) dishonest asshole, or perhaps a set of them.

It depends how you define "lie."

The administration created its own shadow intelligence operation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Special_Plans) that, effectively, ignored CIA National Intelligence Estimates and cherry-picked unfiltered/unanalyzed intelligence to made the case for war.

This was a mission in need of justification. The Downing Street Memo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downing_Street_memo) pretty much makes this not open to debate.

"Lie"? Well, there are different kinds of lying.

The Cabinet Office has disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act that those who drafted the dossier were immediately asked to compare British claims against the US president's speech. The next day the dossier's timescale was halved to claim Iraq could get the bomb in a year.

A Foreign Office official who helped draft the dossier, Tim Dowse, told the Chilcot inquiry that disputed claims that Iraq had acquired special aluminium tubes for a nuclear programme were included because the US vice-president, Dick Cheney, had publicly referred to them.

Both changes to the weapons dossier were part of a detailed process of comparing the British claims with US statements and those in a forthcoming CIA dossier. The comparisons were made on the express instructions of Campbell. He told the joint intelligence committee (JIC) chairman, John Scarlett, in a memo on 9 September 2002, that the British dossier should be "one that complements rather than conflicts with" US claims.

Documents that the information commissioner ordered to be released last year show that the drafters of the UK dossier compared its claims closely with the CIA dossier and raised possible contradictions over estimates of Iraq's capabilities.

The commissioner also accidentally released a secret list of documents that he allowed the government to withhold on national security grounds. These included an email dated 13 September 2002 "covering a copy of a Bush speech to compare with UK dossier claims". The Cabinet Office has confirmed the speech was the one Bush gave to the UN the day before.

A new draft of the British weapons dossier virtually eliminated the difference between the US and UK positions. When Blair presented the dossier to parliament 11 days later, he said that Iraq might get the bomb in "a year or two".

The JIC, which prepares formal intelligence assessments, considered the scenario so unlikely that it did not estimate how long it might take.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/jan/10/alastair-campbell-...

The campaign to start the war didn't start with the vote, the vote came at the end of a long campaign of misinformation, orchestrated by the party in power.

both parties played their role and I hope we hold them both accountable. Have you seen any of Kerry's talks on Syria, Libya, etc.?

I also don't feel theres been more justification for our actions in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, or Egypt than Iraq. So changing parties didn't help... at all.

The US under Obama managed to avoid getting involved in a civil war in Syria, despite much rhetoric form the Republicans telling people how weak that supposedly made Obama look. If you prefer to stay out of such conflicts, would you really consider voting for the party that was enthusiastically calling for intervention?

> despite much rhetoric form the Republicans telling people how weak that supposedly made Obama look

As I said, look at Kerry's talks. He's very much a part of the Democrat establishment and completely contradicts what you're saying.

Now, look at Rand's position on these same countries. The false dichotomy you're presenting is exactly that - false.

Doesn't say much for the opposition party... why were the Democrats so easily duped?

The American people were duped. And it wasn't easy; they had to create a lot of lies, some coming straight from the CIA (being pressured to create a case for war). They put on quite a show at the UN. And when the people get behind something, politicians have to take notice; after all, they can't wield any influence on the process if they don't get voted in. The mood in the country at the time was vengeful, hawkish.

And really it's a separate issue. The point is, who would you rather vote for? Would you really prefer voting for the really successful liars?

I would rather vote for neither party. Liars vs. people too stupid to protect us from the liars, while simultaneously wagging their fingers in our faces, claiming to be smart, and pretending they weren't duped by the liars.

Not an inspiring choice.

There's a big difference:

1) She was part of the administration that started the Iraq War.

2) She is on the record supporting Anonymous Bulk Data Collection

3) She is on the record supporting Warrentless phone taps

4) She is on the record supporting the Patriot act.

5) She was part of the administration, that created, wrote, and legalized the Patriot Act.

Now she wants you to trust her with you data.

I don't think so.

You can chalk up the current administration with 4 out of 5 of those same facts.

>>> Now she wants you to trust her with you data.

So does Facebook, so does Google, so do a shit ton of other tech companies. Are you railing against them as well?? Somehow I don't think so. This is the double standard I'm talking about.

Bush has been out of office for almost 6 years and nobody treads at all on the myriad of things Obama has done which mirrors almost to a tee the stuff Bush did. All you want to see is people who were aligned with him are somehow worse than what the current administration is doing.

Give me a break.

This is a strawman. When Dropbox appoints Harry Reid to the board, we can talk.

EXACTLY!!! If you're going to accuse someone of "partisan" politics, you must provide a counterexample.

Rice is a well-known villain on the internet. It's not a surprise people will react this way to her.

Seems every woman who becomes involved in tech becomes a villain on the Internet.

Isn't Al Gore on a few boards?

But I get it.

He's okay because he agrees with Your Politics.

And Condi is bad because she agrees with Not Your Politics.

Did Al Gore knowingly lie to force the country into disastrous and ruinous wars?

Did Al Gore approve warrantless wiretaps, illegal detainment of citizens and non-citizens and the use of torture by agents of the American Government?

In her role as National Security Advisor Ms. Rice did both of those things.

Now you might refuse to acknowledge that she is a war criminal, but that earns you the same contempt as someone who denies Climate Change; which incidentally Mr. Gore did his level best to warn us about.

Now I have to tell you that I find your politics reprehensible, your willful denial of reality as disgusting as that of a heroin addict. And think that you and your fellow travelers in the "Conservative" movement are exemplary of the craven habit of bending at the knee for that most unamerican of practices; the unearned aristocracy of inherited wealth.

You disgust me. You have no thoughts of your own, but merely parrot slogans handed to you by your betters.

Are you really asserting that Al Gore has done nothing wrong during his political career?

Even his most adamant supporters that I know IRL are aware of those shortcoming & acknowledge them.

> Now I have to tell you that I find your politics reprehensible

Interesting how much you purport to know. I haven't stated any political beliefs.

> You disgust me.

It's disappointing how quickly you resort to ad hominem attacks.

Consider the discussion over.

plonk

a. You don't understand what an ad hominem actually is.

b. Show me exactly where Al Gore committed an outright war crime.

c. If you think that war crimes are a mere baguatelle and should not interfere with a politicians later life in civil society; that is in itself a reprehensible political stance.

If justice were a feature of this world the entire war cabinet of the first Bush administration would be serving time; I'm sorry that you live in such an insulated little bubble that the murder of more than a million Iraqi civilians due to the documentable lies of the aforementioned does not register on your moral radar.

So your point is that our country is being ruined because people believe Bush and his cronies lead us to war. You believe that they did not lead us to war because both parties, after receiving misinformation from the bush administration, voted in favor of it. See anything wrong with your logic here?

And Bush couldn't have possibly received misinformation too, right?

Who was in charge of the CIA, again?

George Tenet - 1997-2004

And who did George Tenet report to, again?

Welp theres no chance this guy will respond again. I love the mocking snark followed by "ohhh now I get it, I was the dumb one" disappears

I wasn't really trying to mock him or shut him up, but I really do find his argument ("Well, the CIA lied to Bush!") to be a pathetic one. It's the same as the other common equivocation fallacy employed by Republicans ("Look at this long list of prominent Democrats who voted for the war too!"). The Democrats supported the war based on what they were told by the CIA, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the executive branch. Any intelligence analysts who refrained from hopping on board Bush's war wagon did so at peril of their careers.

The whole Iraq war was an exercise in confirmation bias. Congressional Democrats certainly bear their share of culpability, but they also have very good excuses compared to anyone in the Bush administration. In an ideal world with Nuremberg-like tribunals, the Bush insiders would be swinging from gibbets, while we'd let the Democrats off the hook after a few years in Spandau. Claiming that the people you hired lied to you is no defense.

From say, Condolezza Rice?

Ok, so it was both parties.

But Condoloza Rice could have spoken out about the illegal torture and abuse. She chose not to. In fact she chose to defend it.

That's why she is now responsible for and a symbol of warcrimes.

Couldn't agree more! It was both parties and every last one of them should be held accountable regardless of affiliation. The votes are public knowledge!

People are too quick to in-fighting over sides. Right now both are doing it and both are getting away with it. Just look at Kerry's recent syria, libya, etc. talks.

I don't forgive Condosleeza a pass just like I don't give Clinton a pass for bombing Iraq. (yea, we should remember that far back!)

Is it okay if I intensely disapprove of that war, but also have absolutely no affiliation with or appreciation for any political party, major or otherwise?

I would argue that it is preferred.

The smartest among us don't ascribe to partisan policy choices. I attempt to evaluate every position in which I have an interest based on its merits. This means that I disagree with the left on approximately half the issues, and disagree with the right on approximately the other half (that's a rough estimate, in reality, I think I disagree with either party far more than half).

That said, it's hard to be informed and not develop some loyalty to any particular politician. In all likelihood, you'll develop an affinity towards whichever politician you find agrees with you the most, and it's hard to say that "In general, I like so and so, but for his opinions on x and y."

Jonathan Haidt has done some fantastic research on the subject, specifically in the area of political psychology, and I would encourage you to read "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion".

In practice though, most people are happy to swallow whatever their party tells them is true, even when it provably isn't.

"There are two options:

- The option of war might seem a priori to be the swiftest. But let us not forget that having won the war, one has to build peace. Let us not delude ourselves; this will be long and difficult because it will be necessary to preserve Iraq's unity and restore stability in a lasting way in a country and region harshly affected by the intrusion of force.

- Faced with such perspectives, there is an alternative in the inspections which allow us to move forward day by day with the effective and peaceful disarmament of Iraq. In the end is that choice not the most sure and most rapid?

No one can assert today that the path of war will be shorter than that of the inspections. No one can claim either that it might lead to a safer, more just and more stable world. For war is always the sanction of failure. Would this be our sole recourse in the face of the many challenges at this time?"

"This message comes to you today from an old country, France, from a continent like mine, Europe, that has known wars, occupation and barbarity. A country that does not forget and knows everything it owes to the freedom-fighters who came from America and elsewhere. And yet has never ceased to stand upright in the face of history and before mankind. Faithful to its values, it wishes resolutely to act with all the members of the international community. It believes in our ability to build together a better world."

(this is a speech by a conservative guy, but a well travelled one)

Please stop equating Liberals and the Democratic party.

They only did what Greenspan told them to. It doesn't matter who 'owns' the oil. As long as it's sold in dollars, it props up the value of the US dollar.

"They only did what Greenspan told them to."

Do you have any evidence for that?

He admitted it himself. In Greenspan's book, he mentions how he regretted urging Bush to do it.

Interesting. I'd somehow missed that.

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