Recklessness and Willful blindness (euphemistically termed "groupthink") are enough for fraud; they certainly were at least this culpable, if not more so in many cases.
I agree with you, Max. I don't know if you've noticed but I almost never post here anymore. It's gotten especially sorry in here since the bannings of rimrocker, MacBeth, Major and RM95. I just thought the final end to the search for the WMD's was worth a post and, given the enormity of the screw up, I thought it was worth a somewhat angry one. I've tried to moderate my tone in here and I think I've largely succeeded, but today's news really got to me. I don't know if you voted for Bush the last time around. If you did, I apologize for saying you should be ashamed. That was impolite. I apologize to the other Bush voters too for being impolite. What I should have said is, "I understand how people could vote for Bush the first time around but, knowing what we knew, how could anyone vote for him again?" That would have been more civil.
p.s. I really think it's too easy to dismiss any substantive debate with this sort of statement and I think it's unfair. If you thought I was calling shame on people for not agreeing with me, let me disabuse you of that idea. I wasn't. I think we can all agree it is a bad thing to start a war in which tens or hundreds of thousands will die on a false premise. I think we can all further agree that it's worse if there is evidence that premise was probably known to be false. And I think we can finally agree that it is even worse than that if a knowingly false premise was sold to the American people in order to gain support for that war. This is not a partisan thing. This is not me backing my guy and bashing someone else's. There are many, many Republicans, some high ranking and distinguished like Scowcroft, who agree that this war was knowingly sold to the American people on a premise that the sellers knew to be false. I apologize again for my less than civil tone, but if that's not cause for outrage I really don't know what is.
What's really interesting is that by looking at the election results, it seems that a LOT of former Gore supporters switched camps to vote for Bush this time around. In 2000 the popular vote was 47.9% Bush, 48.4% Gore. This time around it was 51%/48% Bush.
He didn't want the truth, he wanted the war. I agree. GWB approached the war as a political objective. Determining the truth about Iraq, Saddam, WMD, Al Qaeda et. al. was not important to GWB.
Wrong. Almost 51 million people voted for Gore; over 57 million voted for Kerry. Kerry picked up over 6 million votes. Bush just picked up more.
I don't know, this forum is rather unreadable these days..maybe it should be shut down ...our guy was an idiot on the War doesn't give license to truth from everyone on the other side of the line...abortion was the deciding factor forme in this election Politics is rhetoric, Richard Rorty has destroyed the whole system.
twhy: I've said before and I'll say again that if the abortion issue was the deciding factor for you I understand your Bush vote. As an across the board pro-lifer though (a position I respect), I would think the war would bother you a lot, most particularly now that we know Iraq posed no threat whatsoever.
my problem is...there is no candidate i can really get fully behind. they all bug me. none inspire me. i vote by default. and wonder if it's ok to not vote. we have the best candidates.... FOR ME TO POOP ON!!!!
No it totally pisses me off.... but that's politics these days, its as Foucault said, all about power structures and gaining a hold on the truth...( foucault by the way is in favor of this seeing no real truth) therefore, whoever makes up this best truth is the one who gets to talk... Bunch of hooey if you ask me
True, I suppose you could look at it that way, but I thought you were espousing a theory in which most of the new voters would vote democratic, though. I seem to remember you being quite confident about all the new turnout and how it would swing the election to Kerry.
and the end result is guys like this and T_J, who care nothing about the truth. Only manipulation. Same can be said for guys on the other side, maybe even Sam (sorry Sam, why I think you're much nicer than those guys I still think your arguments sometimes are about having the best arguement rather than the truth).
I agree with you here too, Max. I deeply disliked and deeply distrusted Kerry, but he never did anything approaching what Bush did with that war. We can argue about the size of government (Bush's is the biggest ever), the size of the deficit (biggest ever), job loss (biggest ever) and agree to disagree. We can argue abortion and gay marriage and values and character. We can argue freedom to and from religion. But when tens or hundreds of thousands of innocent people, Americans and others, die because we were willfully misled, I put my disappointment in the candidates aside and vote to try and stop the one who did it. Kerry was awful. He didn't stand up for what he believed and I think it's even possible that beyond being cynical he might just be a bad man. I think it's possible (not likely in my opinion, but possible) he'd have done harm to this country. But he has never done anything approaching what Bush did with that Iraq war. They are still killing each other over there because Bush was dishonest with the American people and they will be for a very long time. Because of Bush. Nothing Kerry ever did or said compares. On the other thing, of course it's okay not to vote. Your vote doesn't really matter anyway, particularly in Texas. But if you care about these things, whether it's unborn babies or already born Iraqi babies or fully grown men of various nationalities, if you care about them dying unnecessary deaths, I would think you would want to vote. And in that case, if you can't find someone to vote for I'd think you could at least find someone to vote against. That's what I did and I felt damn good about it, even while I disdained the guy whose name I checked.
And of course that confidence was misplaced as that bit of conventional wisdom was subsequently invalidated; your theory was just invalidated ab initio. Yet in the end they are both invalid. EDIT: Twhy, I am not nice. Take that back.
You "suppose" it could? You definitively stated that Gore voters crossed over to vote Bush. Kerry got over 6 million more votes than Gore. You were wrong. Can you ever own up to being wrong or are you really your brother's twin?
Max: Believe me when I tell you I'd have happily voted for Sigmund the Sea Monster instead of Kerry had the stakes been lower. I never voted for Clinton or Gore. I wrote in a candidate in 92, voted Libertarian (or maybe Green, can't remember) in 96 and Nader in 00, but this time the stakes were just too high.
