You are going to have to be more specific than that, because it looks like you are saying that it was a "lie" to think that Saddam had WMD. I really doubt you are that ignorant and uninformed to make such an idiotic claim.
The bit I have trouble understanding is the bit where according to you it suddenly "failed", providing the jusitification for an attack. See, Hussein was bending over backwards to comply with all US demands, and the UN inspectors said sanctions were working fine and that there were no weapons. The rest of the world was happy to continue with a policy of containment. But to you and the Bush regime, Iraq was now suddenly a target for invasion.
If you read any of the weapons reports issued by the ISG and the UN you would know that Saddam wasn't bending over backwards to comply with US demands. He was bending over backwards to create the illusion of compliance so we would leave him alone. His main goal was to end the UN sanctions so he could resume his weapons programs that he had done a pretty damn good job of hiding from the UN inspectors.
Lets not go through this all again. THERE WERE NO WEAPONS. Iraq was not a threat. The intelligence community knew it. The US and UK governments knew it. The reasons for invasion lay elsewhere (hint: all wars are fought for economic reasons). The whole world is aware of this. Including everybody in your own country who doesn't have his head up his ass. Why don't you get it?
Why don't you get it? The reasons for the war have been clearly justified by our subsequent investigations. Saddam Hussein was clearly a threat to the peace and security of the region, and was in defiance of international order for 13 years.
Take a step back and look at what you are saying! Saddam Hussein was an oppressive dictator who:
Tried to illegally expand his borders TWICE
Attacked a non-hostile state at least FOUR times
Used Chemical weapons on a number of occasions, both against Iran and against his own people
Publically stated his goal of obtaining Nuclear and Biological Weapons
Was on the US State Department list of State Sponsors of Terrorism for over 20 years
Was directly responsible for between 500,000 and 2,000,000 deaths of his own people
Had participated actively in international terrorism, including a plot to assassinate a former US president, and a plot to bomb a radio facility in Prague
Had paid families of terrorist bombers on LIVE TV
Had offered political assylum to Osama Bin Laden in 1998
Was currently providing assylum to Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters that escaped Afghanistan in December 2001
Was in direct defiance of 17 unanimously passed chapter 7 UN Security Council resolutions
Had not accounted for stockpiles of WMD that the UN Inspectors knew about, including 30,000 liters of Anthrax
How on earth can you claim that this was not a threat? How on earth can you claim that the world is not any safer because Saddam Hussein is no longer in power?
Combine the above facts with the fact that we just had got our butts kicked on 9/11 by a similar threat that we had ignored, and leaving him alone so he could write the playbook for any rouge despot who wanted to defy the US and the UN was NOT an option.
Israel? North Korea comes to mind, but the Resolutions were blocked by china AFAIK
BZZZT. There are no other countries that have UN resolutions passed under the 7th chapter of the UN charter. If you had any clue about the UN, you would know that Chapter 7 resolutions are the only kind that allow member states that are not party to the resolution to enforce with military or economic action.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/: Saddam Husayn so dominated the Iraqi Regime that its strategic intent was his alone. He wanted to end sanctions while preserving the capability to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) when sanctions were lifted. http://www.cia.gov/cia/public_affairs/speeches/200 3/david_kay_10022003.html: We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002. The discovery of these deliberate concealment efforts have come about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of equipment and activities that ISG has discovered that should have been declared to the UN.
http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Anthropology/pu blications/General_Powell.htm think YOU are making a fool of yourself by claiming "well known facts" without backing
Without backing, huh? The only thing you have provided is an op-ed that directly contradicts your own claim. You said "Iraq had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. And THAT is well known and documented" and then "backed" that up with piece called "Al Qaeda-Iraq Connection Tenuous at Best". Which are you arguing? That there was no connection, or that there was a tenuous connection?
Isn't that standard operating procedure since the Iraq war?
Are you ignorant of the 13 years of diplomacy prior to the Iraq war where we were working towards a peaceful, diplomatic resolution of the conflict without military force? Only when that failed did we attack.
12/07/02 - Iraq gives 12000 pages of documentation to UN.
12/13/02 - The US (NOT U.N.) claim "missing answers"
You seem to have forgotten about 1/27/03 - Hans Blix said: "On 7 December 2002, Iraq submitted a declaration of some 12,000 pages in response to paragraph 3 of resolution 1441 (2002) and within the time stipulated by the Security Council... Regrettably, the 12,000 page declaration, most of which is a reprint of earlier documents, does not seem to contain any new evidence that would eliminate the questions or reduce their number. Even Iraq's letter sent in response to our recent discussions in Baghdad to the President of the Security Council on 24 January does not lead us to the resolution of these issues."
Other countries fail to meet U.N. resolutions without being invaded
Yeah? Name one.
Wow, two things: 1. You admit he DIDN'T have a WMD program. 2. You say he wanted to build a WMD program, i assume you got that iformation via CNN.
If you ever bothered to read the ISG report regarding Iraq's WMD capabilities, you would know that 1. Iraq certainly did have WMD programs and 2. He retained equipment and intellectual capital that was in violation of the UN requirements and 3. He had clear intentions of mass producing WMD as soon as the UN sanctions were removed.
But my guess is that you never even bothered to read the report.
I call bullshit. Iraq had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. And THAT is well known and documented.
Don't be ignorant. There are clear and documented ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda that date back to the early 1990's. The Clinton Administration connected Al Qaeda and Iraq when they bombed the pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, and the Clinton State Department issued a clear indictment that Al Qaeda "reached an understanding with the Government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq."
Zarqawi has been in Iraq since early 2002, and has a clear history with Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden. The Iraqi terrorist group Ansar Al-Islam also had a relationship with Al Qaeda.
More importantly, Iraq was on the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism for the better part of 2 decades.
Arguing that Iraq was not involved with terrorists only makes you look stupid and ignorant, but I think most people already knew that about you after reading some of your other idiotic posts.
Thought not. See, North Korea is a real threat. Probably why Bush is ignoring it.
What makes you think we are ignoring it? Are you under the mistaken impression that our first response should be full scale military invasion without diplomacy?
It's funny that the left has been reduced to counting words in a speach for their criticisms. That is fine by me. If you want to cry and whine and count words, go right ahead. We'll just be here, winning all the elections, controlling the country, and making the world a better place.
I believe Abu Nidal has struck out at the USA, 20 years ago, but I don't think those other groups have.
That isn't the point. You can't declare war on terrorism and ignore one of the largest supporters of international terror.
How do the training grounds at Salman Pak compare with School Of The Americas?
It doesn't. The SOA trained governments in Latin America how to spread freedom and democracy, Salman Pak trained terrorists how to kill as many civilians as possible. It is unfortunate that some SOA "graduates" have committed atrocities, but there is no evidence that suggests the US was behind those atrocities.
What was Rumsfeld doing shaking hands with the Known Terrorist Supporter Saddam Hussein in 1983?
Well, in 1983 Saddam Hussein was also fighting the worlds largest supporter of Terrorism -- one that had held 66 innocent diplomats hostage for 443 days.
Okay, enough rhetoric. Where the hell do you get the idea that I have an irrational hatred for the United States?
Well, your first response to a post describing the terrorist ties in a country that was led by a brutal dictator was to blame the US. And you really didn't even come up with a good argument when you were blaming the US.
Are you denying that the No-Fly Zones offered a blanket of protection to the Kurds? (From Saddam I mean, the Turks were bombing the hell out of the Kurds, and did so with impunity because Iraq couldn't respond without opening a can of NATO whoopass.)
The only kurdish terrorist group that existed in northern Iraq was Jund al-Islam, and they had ties with Saddam. He wasn't trying to bomb them -- they were the only Kurdish group that liked Saddam. When Jund al-Islam joined Al Qaeda refugees from Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002, they formed Ansar al-Islam, and that organization had very close ties with Saddam, including senior leadership that was on the Iraqi Military Intelligence payroll.
I accept that Saddam supported terrorism.
I've yet to see evidence that, after 1991, Saddam supported terrorism against the United States. Perhaps you know something the 9/11 Comission doesn't. Do tell.
The foiled 1998 attempt at bombing the US held radio free Prague would have been an attack against the US had we not stopped it.
I shouldn't need to point out to you that the purported attempted assassination on our 41st President is not an act of terror.
I guess you can say that, but you would be wrong by every definition of the word "terrorism". A "terrorist activity" is:
(I) The highjacking or sabotage of any conveyance (including an aircraft, vessel, or vehicle).
(II) The seizing or detaining, and threatening to kill, injure, or continue to detain, another individual in order to compel a third person (including a governmental organization) to do or abstain from doing any act as an explicit or implicit condition for the release of the individual seized or detained.
(III) A violent attack upon an internationally protected person (as defined in section 1116(b)(4) of title 18) or upon the liberty of such a person.
(IV) An assassination.
(V) The use of any -
(a) biological agent, chemical agent, or nuclear weapon or device, or
(b) explosive or firearm (other than for mere personal monetary gain), with intent to endanger, directly or indirectly, the safety of one or more individuals or to cause substantial damage to property.
(VI) A threat, attempt, or conspiracy to do any of the foregoing.
And "terrorist activity" includes planning, supplying, supporting, funding, or carrying out any of the acts listed above.
So by the legal definition of terrorism, a foild plan to assassinate a former US president is most certainly an act of terror under both (III) and (IV) of the definition.
Seems to me, that's the advertisers' problem, not the customer's.
In the TV business, the advertiser is the customer, and we (the TV viewers) are the product. The customer pays good money to get our eyeballs in front of their ads. It is not unreasonable for broadcasters to take steps to make sure the product they are offering is worth it to their customers so that these customers continue to give them money.
Writing laws that prevent manufacturers from making hardware that consumers want to buy is, by and large, wrong.
I agree 100%. This article isn't about writing laws, though, it is about broadcasters and Tivo teaming up to try and get more ads in different places so there is a better chance that they will be seen. There is no law requiring Tivo to display banner ads while you fast forward through commercials.
I sure as hell can, because my ToS with Time-Warner Cable says nothing about agreeing to watch advertising. I pay for them to put a signal into my home, if they subsidize the signal with ads, that's their problem. If I don't watch the ads, they can't do anything about it.
If businesses decide ads aren't working and they stop running them, the cable company can feel free to change their rates, then I can decide if I still want their service.
I guess I should revise my original statement to "You cannot expect the right to continue to watch TV programs that are funded by advertising dollars while at the same time refusing to watch the advertising".
You are right, they can put ads in the middle of shows, they can put ads on your Tivo while you are fast forwarding, and they can put tricky product placements in the show, but they can't force you to watch it. If more and more people avoid advertisements, broadcasters will have to change the rates they charge viewers, and you can bet that there will be people who find that unacceptable.
Y'all act like HBO doesn't put out Grammy winning shows. Shows that, unsurprisingly, are BETTER than shows on regular TV. Shows with NO COMMERCIALS. You just have to pay for the channel if you want to pay for it. Digital TV should make that easier, there are channels I'd subscribe to, and channels I don't give a flip about. I don't NEED a hundred channels when I currently only watch 20. I KNOW I only watch 20 because that's how many different channels I have a show set to record on MythTV, which I currently use to time shift shows, as well as watch them without commercials.
What is the going rate for HBO nowadays? About $10/month? If all channels in your standard digital TV package charged a similar price for commercial-free programming, TV bills would be pushing $1,000 per month.
I would love to see some kind of ala cart system where you could pick and choose specific commercial free channels from a broad range of choices (not just movie channels). It would be great if we could pay for exactly what programming we wanted without having to get a bunch of other channels thrown in the mix.
As advertising becomes less effective, it will be interesting to see how the TV business evolves.
I have a "right" to do basically whatever the hell I want to. They have a "right" to do basically whatever the hell they want to. Where their "rights" end is when they think they can force me to watch their advertisements.
Nobody is forcing you to do anything. There is no ad police that will force you to watch a banner ad while you are fast forwarding your tivo.
I absolutely DO have the right to watch TV programs, and ignore the ads. I signed no contract. I have no obligation. They freely put the content into my TV, and I can freely watch what I choose. Or not.
Correct. However, broadcasters are only going to provide those TV programs if they can also make a profit. They don't "freely" put content into your TV, it costs them a lot of money to do it, and the only reason they are doing it is because their customers (the advertisers) have the expectation that their ads will be seen. Once that expectation is gone, there will either be a drastic reduction in the quality and quantity of TV, or you will end up paying for it another way.
Their business model (or failure thereof) is not my responsibility.
Ah. The classic Slashdot argument. Just because somebody charges (either money or time) for something that you happen to want for free, you think you have the right to take it anyway and blame it on their "business model".
If they need to change their business model to subscription based we certainly have no right to complain, but when they go to the feds and make it illegal for us to buy a machine that skips commercials, that's totally unacceptable.
I agree that this should not be a matter of law, but I don't think that is what we are talking about here. This story is about Tivo placing ads on the screen while you are fast forwarding through commercials, not laws against skipping commercials.
Broadcasters have every right to do all they can to get you to watch commercials, just as you have every right to do all you can to avoid watching them. But my basic point is that once enough people figure out how to avoid commercials, we will end up having to pay for TV another way. It isn't free.
Their revenue stream and rights to artistic integrity end when they reach the consumer. At that point it's my signal in my device and as long as I don't rebroadcast it they need to leave me the hell alone.
That's not really the point, though. You cannot expect the right to watch TV programs that are funded by advertising dollars while at the same time refusing to watch the advertising. At some point the advertisers will not be willing to pay for it any more, and there will not be anything left to watch. It costs money to produce and broadcast TV programs, and the only way people are going to spend money on it is if it is worthwile to them. We can make it worthwile by either lending our eyeballs for a few seconds, or paying out the nose for our cable bill.
The more appropriate question is "Why is it that the glitches that favor the republican party are the only ones the media talks about".
There have been plenty of glitches that hurt the Republicans, most notably in Carteret County, N.C. where 4,500 votes were permanantly lost. Gone. Not recoverable. No recount. This county has historically voted 65% for Republican candidates, so this "glitch" cost Bush almost 3,000 votes.
No, Bush "got" 57% of the vote in that county. You are confusing an obvious error that was corrected within 12 hours of the election with the official vote tally that is on the books today.
Its one thing to say something. Its another to produce evidence and logical reasonings, to back up said comments. Palast, apparently, does both.
The only problem is that the evidence that Palast "produces" is wrong.
Kinda like when he wrote an article in Salon.com blaming Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris for the voter purge list, forcing Salon.com to quickly issue a correction stating that the voter list was commissioned before Harris and Bush took office.
By the way, "producing" is the correct word to use for the evidence that Palast uses. He certainly doesn't "find" or "discover" or "uncover" any evidence. Everything he claims is obviously manufactured.
In The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Palast details how the felon purging of the voter lists was subcontracted out to a private corporation that could refute inquiries by claiming that revealing details of its operations would compromise trade secrets, proprietary information. Nevertheless, Florida chose to contract out this service.
It is interesting how Palast somehow blames this on Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris, when in reality the contracting of this voter list was mandated by the Florida Legislature in 1997, before Bush or Harris were even in office. The private corporation was selected by Ethel Baxtor, the Democrat director of elections, before Bush or Harris took office. Florida State Law provided no way for the Governor or Secretary of State to remove names from voter registration rolls. This is clearly the responsibility of the County Election Supervisor. Yet Greg Palast blamed Bush and Harris for the people who were supposedly removed from the voter registration rolls.
You would think that an unbiased "investigative reporter" would at least have gotten these simple facts correct.
This "conclusion" was not based on evidence. The commission did not hear testimony from a single person who was incorrectly denied the right to vote because of this voter purge list, and yet the concluded that there was "widespread disenfranchisement and denial of voting rights". Does that sound like a reasonable conclusion based on the evidence they heard?
The have a chapter in their report entitled "First-Hand Accounts of Voter Disenfranchisement" in which they document people denied the vote...The page is full of stories from individuals and poll workers, all named.
Our discussion is about the accuracy of the Felon list, and people who were not allowed to vote because of they were incorrectly identified as convicted felons. The testimony detailed in these first hand accounts does not include anybody who fits this catagory.
This is, admittedly, completely off topic, but I find it odd that any state would deny the vote to felons who had served their time. Why not just let them vote?
I think this is a valid question, however Florida is not an exception. 46 states have laws restricting the voting rights of convicted felons, and 10 states (including Florida) have laws that permanantly remove voting rights unless they are restored by an executive clemancy board. The 14th Amendment clearly gives states the right to deny voting rights to people who have committed crimes.
If that's the case, why did the findings include this item:
African Americans had a significantly greater chance of being listed on Florida's mandated purge list. The probability of names of African Americans appearing on the list in error was significantly greater than the likelihood of the names of whites being erroneously included on the purge list.
The state of Florida's use of this purge list, combined with the state law that places the burden on voters to remove themselves from the list, resulted in denying countless African Americans the right to vote.
You are confusing two distinct situations. Nobody is claiming that the DBT list contained false positives -- it is clear that it did. However, there are no documented cases of legitimate voters actually being denied the right to vote as a result of this list. The USCCR certainly didn't receive testimony from anybody who were not allowed to vote.
In addition, those statements that you quoted are misleading at best and blatantly wrong at worst. Whites were almost twice as likely to be incorrectly included on the felon list than blacks. An evaluation of the Miami-Dade felon list revealed that 5.1% of the blacks on the list were identified as mistakes and cleared to vote, but 9.9% of the whites on the list were identified as mistakes. The error rate for Whites was nearly double the error rate for blacks.
Translation: we [the Gov. and SecOfState] can fuck up as much as we want, and blow a few million of taxpayer's money, because it's the counties fault if they actually use the list we give them.
Brilliant defense, there.
You can translate that however you want, but the simple fact is that for the 2000 election, Florida State Law placed the burden of voter registration rolls soley on the county election supervisor. There was a clear procedure set up by the Florida legislature where the supervisors were to verify, contact, and review all of the names that appeared on the list. State election officials had absolutely no say in who ended up on the registration rolls.
No, I was countering the argument that the sole responsibility for maintaining voter rolls is on the counties. Federal law places the responsibility on the state, not the county. It doesn't matter what Florida law says anymore, since it's been pre-empted by federal law.
Right, and this still has absolutely no bearing on what happened in the 2000 election.
Very clever of you to quote from the dissent, there. You know... the/losing/ argument. The conclusion of the majority report stated.
Nope. Thats not from the dissenting statement. That is directly from the Majority's Executive Summary of the report. Reading the report only makes the following clear:
The USCCR did not claim that Jeb Bush or Katherine Harris stole the election or consipired to disenfranchise voters
The USCCR did claim that many black voters were disenfranchised
The USCCR did not provide any solid evidence proving their claims of disenfranchisement beyond flawed statistical analyis and anecdotal evidence
The report generated a harsh dissenting statement from the minority commission members who sharply disagreed with the conclusion of the majority
Say to yourself "the ends do not justify the means". Now say it again. Try it a few more times until it sinks in. If I toss out 19 legitimate voters for every 1 felon, that's not even close to making a halfway decent effort. I can fault them for being wrong 95% of the time. If you're wrong in school 95% of the time, you don't even come close to passing. You fail. And I can fault them for foisting a failure of a list onto county officials.
While you are claiming that 19 legitimate voters were "tossed" in order to get 1 felon off the list, the USCCR failed to find a single person who actually was not allowed to vote as a result of being incorrectly identified as a felon. On the other hand, the Miami Herald estimated that 5,600 felons illegally voted in Florida because the felon lists were scrapped in some counties.
OK, if it's not the responsibility of the state to maintain voter rolls, what the hell were they doing spending $2.3 million of taxpayer money to make a list of people that shouldn't have been on the county rolls? The sure sounds like the state trying to have its say in maintaining the voter lists.
Florida election law is very clear that voter registration rolls are maintained by the elected County election supervisors. The statewide maintenance list was generated as a result of a law passed by the Florida Legislature (before Jeb Bush was in office, by the way), and was to be sent to county election supervisors for action.
And even if that was the case in 2000, it's no longer true. The Help America Vote Act requires states to centralize their voter database as of 01/2004.
Wait. You are faulting Jeb Bush in the 2000 election because Florida did not follow a law that went into effect 3 years after the 2000 election?
Man, they really gave Palast the smackdown there. He and his "crackpot theories" of deriliction of duty on the part of the Gov. Bush and Sec. Harris. Yep, that Commission really cleared their names.
Greg Palast claims that Jeb Bush and Catherine Harris "stole" the election for G.W. Bush. The commission found:
The report does not find that the highest officials of the state conspired to disenfranchise voters. Moreover, even if it was foreseeable that certain actions by officials led to voter disenfranchisement, this alone does not mean that intentional discrimination occurred
As to the rest of the commissions claims that you provided, I will refer you to the Dissenting Statement of Abigail Thernstrom and Russell G. Redenbaugh for a complete rebuttal.
Slashdot Mirror
Guess what? The government still needs judicial approval to clear a wiretap on a suspect. The Patriot Act didn't change that.
You are going to have to be more specific than that, because it looks like you are saying that it was a "lie" to think that Saddam had WMD. I really doubt you are that ignorant and uninformed to make such an idiotic claim.
Fact: Dubya has consistently lied to the american people.
Yeah? Give an example.
(I'll give a hint. Saying something that you politically disagree with is not a "lie")
Pretty ironic how you prefaced a blatent attempt at propoganda with the phrase "We really need facts, not propoganda."
If you read any of the weapons reports issued by the ISG and the UN you would know that Saddam wasn't bending over backwards to comply with US demands. He was bending over backwards to create the illusion of compliance so we would leave him alone. His main goal was to end the UN sanctions so he could resume his weapons programs that he had done a pretty damn good job of hiding from the UN inspectors.
Lets not go through this all again. THERE WERE NO WEAPONS. Iraq was not a threat. The intelligence community knew it. The US and UK governments knew it. The reasons for invasion lay elsewhere (hint: all wars are fought for economic reasons). The whole world is aware of this. Including everybody in your own country who doesn't have his head up his ass. Why don't you get it?
Why don't you get it? The reasons for the war have been clearly justified by our subsequent investigations. Saddam Hussein was clearly a threat to the peace and security of the region, and was in defiance of international order for 13 years.
Take a step back and look at what you are saying! Saddam Hussein was an oppressive dictator who:
Tried to illegally expand his borders TWICE
Attacked a non-hostile state at least FOUR times
Used Chemical weapons on a number of occasions, both against Iran and against his own people
Publically stated his goal of obtaining Nuclear and Biological Weapons
Was on the US State Department list of State Sponsors of Terrorism for over 20 years
Was directly responsible for between 500,000 and 2,000,000 deaths of his own people
Had participated actively in international terrorism, including a plot to assassinate a former US president, and a plot to bomb a radio facility in Prague
Had paid families of terrorist bombers on LIVE TV
Had offered political assylum to Osama Bin Laden in 1998
Was currently providing assylum to Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters that escaped Afghanistan in December 2001
Was in direct defiance of 17 unanimously passed chapter 7 UN Security Council resolutions
Had not accounted for stockpiles of WMD that the UN Inspectors knew about, including 30,000 liters of Anthrax
How on earth can you claim that this was not a threat? How on earth can you claim that the world is not any safer because Saddam Hussein is no longer in power?
Combine the above facts with the fact that we just had got our butts kicked on 9/11 by a similar threat that we had ignored, and leaving him alone so he could write the playbook for any rouge despot who wanted to defy the US and the UN was NOT an option.
Israel? North Korea comes to mind, but the Resolutions were blocked by china AFAIK
2 -un-wmd_x.htm
0 3/david_kay_10022003.html: We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002. The discovery of these deliberate concealment efforts have come about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of equipment and activities that ISG has discovered that should have been declared to the UN.
BZZZT. There are no other countries that have UN resolutions passed under the 7th chapter of the UN charter. If you had any clue about the UN, you would know that Chapter 7 resolutions are the only kind that allow member states that are not party to the resolution to enforce with military or economic action.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-03-0
I see your link, and raise you one:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/: Saddam Husayn so dominated the Iraqi Regime that its strategic intent was his alone. He wanted to end sanctions while preserving the capability to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) when sanctions were lifted.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/public_affairs/speeches/20
http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Anthropology/pu blications/General_Powell.htm
think YOU are making a fool of yourself by claiming "well known facts" without backing
Without backing, huh? The only thing you have provided is an op-ed that directly contradicts your own claim. You said "Iraq had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. And THAT is well known and documented" and then "backed" that up with piece called "Al Qaeda-Iraq Connection Tenuous at Best". Which are you arguing? That there was no connection, or that there was a tenuous connection?
Here are some more sources:
Iraq-al Qaeda link comes in focus
Terrorist behind September 11 strike was trained by Saddam
The Clinton View of Iraq-al Qaeda Ties
Clinton first linked al Qaeda to Saddam
The proof that Saddam worked with bin Laden
US State Department Indictment
Not so long ago, the ties between Iraq and al Qaeda were conventional wisdom. The conventional wisdom was right
Saddam Hussein offered Bin Laden asylum
Saddam Possessed WMD, Had Extensive Terror Ties
UN envoy confirms terrorist meeting
Ansar al-Islam: Back in Iraq
Isn't that standard operating procedure since the Iraq war?
Are you ignorant of the 13 years of diplomacy prior to the Iraq war where we were working towards a peaceful, diplomatic resolution of the conflict without military force? Only when that failed did we attack.
Boy, you are uninformed.
12/07/02 - Iraq gives 12000 pages of documentation to UN. 12/13/02 - The US (NOT U.N.) claim "missing answers"
You seem to have forgotten about 1/27/03 - Hans Blix said: "On 7 December 2002, Iraq submitted a declaration of some 12,000 pages in response to paragraph 3 of resolution 1441 (2002) and within the time stipulated by the Security Council... Regrettably, the 12,000 page declaration, most of which is a reprint of earlier documents, does not seem to contain any new evidence that would eliminate the questions or reduce their number. Even Iraq's letter sent in response to our recent discussions in Baghdad to the President of the Security Council on 24 January does not lead us to the resolution of these issues."
Other countries fail to meet U.N. resolutions without being invaded
Yeah? Name one.
Wow, two things: 1. You admit he DIDN'T have a WMD program. 2. You say he wanted to build a WMD program, i assume you got that iformation via CNN.
If you ever bothered to read the ISG report regarding Iraq's WMD capabilities, you would know that 1. Iraq certainly did have WMD programs and 2. He retained equipment and intellectual capital that was in violation of the UN requirements and 3. He had clear intentions of mass producing WMD as soon as the UN sanctions were removed.
But my guess is that you never even bothered to read the report.
I call bullshit. Iraq had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. And THAT is well known and documented.
Don't be ignorant. There are clear and documented ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda that date back to the early 1990's. The Clinton Administration connected Al Qaeda and Iraq when they bombed the pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, and the Clinton State Department issued a clear indictment that Al Qaeda "reached an understanding with the Government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq."
Zarqawi has been in Iraq since early 2002, and has a clear history with Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden. The Iraqi terrorist group Ansar Al-Islam also had a relationship with Al Qaeda.
More importantly, Iraq was on the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism for the better part of 2 decades.
Arguing that Iraq was not involved with terrorists only makes you look stupid and ignorant, but I think most people already knew that about you after reading some of your other idiotic posts.
Thought not. See, North Korea is a real threat. Probably why Bush is ignoring it.
What makes you think we are ignoring it? Are you under the mistaken impression that our first response should be full scale military invasion without diplomacy?
It's funny that the left has been reduced to counting words in a speach for their criticisms. That is fine by me. If you want to cry and whine and count words, go right ahead. We'll just be here, winning all the elections, controlling the country, and making the world a better place.
That isn't the point. You can't declare war on terrorism and ignore one of the largest supporters of international terror.
How do the training grounds at Salman Pak compare with School Of The Americas?
It doesn't. The SOA trained governments in Latin America how to spread freedom and democracy, Salman Pak trained terrorists how to kill as many civilians as possible. It is unfortunate that some SOA "graduates" have committed atrocities, but there is no evidence that suggests the US was behind those atrocities.
What was Rumsfeld doing shaking hands with the Known Terrorist Supporter Saddam Hussein in 1983?
Well, in 1983 Saddam Hussein was also fighting the worlds largest supporter of Terrorism -- one that had held 66 innocent diplomats hostage for 443 days.
Okay, enough rhetoric. Where the hell do you get the idea that I have an irrational hatred for the United States?
Well, your first response to a post describing the terrorist ties in a country that was led by a brutal dictator was to blame the US. And you really didn't even come up with a good argument when you were blaming the US.
Are you denying that the No-Fly Zones offered a blanket of protection to the Kurds? (From Saddam I mean, the Turks were bombing the hell out of the Kurds, and did so with impunity because Iraq couldn't respond without opening a can of NATO whoopass.)
The only kurdish terrorist group that existed in northern Iraq was Jund al-Islam, and they had ties with Saddam. He wasn't trying to bomb them -- they were the only Kurdish group that liked Saddam. When Jund al-Islam joined Al Qaeda refugees from Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002, they formed Ansar al-Islam, and that organization had very close ties with Saddam, including senior leadership that was on the Iraqi Military Intelligence payroll.
I accept that Saddam supported terrorism.
I've yet to see evidence that, after 1991, Saddam supported terrorism against the United States. Perhaps you know something the 9/11 Comission doesn't. Do tell.
The foiled 1998 attempt at bombing the US held radio free Prague would have been an attack against the US had we not stopped it.
I shouldn't need to point out to you that the purported attempted assassination on our 41st President is not an act of terror.
I guess you can say that, but you would be wrong by every definition of the word "terrorism". A "terrorist activity" is:
(I) The highjacking or sabotage of any conveyance (including an aircraft, vessel, or vehicle).
(II) The seizing or detaining, and threatening to kill, injure, or continue to detain, another individual in order to compel a third person (including a governmental organization) to do or abstain from doing any act as an explicit or implicit condition for the release of the individual seized or detained.
(III) A violent attack upon an internationally protected person (as defined in section 1116(b)(4) of title 18) or upon the liberty of such a person.
(IV) An assassination.
(V) The use of any -
(a) biological agent, chemical agent, or nuclear weapon or device, or
(b) explosive or firearm (other than for mere personal monetary gain), with intent to endanger, directly or indirectly, the safety of one or more individuals or to cause substantial damage to property.
(VI) A threat, attempt, or conspiracy to do any of the foregoing.
And "terrorist activity" includes planning, supplying, supporting, funding, or carrying out any of the acts listed above.
So by the legal definition of terrorism, a foild plan to assassinate a former US president is most certainly an act of terror under both (III) and (IV) of the definition.
Seems to me, that's the advertisers' problem, not the customer's.
In the TV business, the advertiser is the customer, and we (the TV viewers) are the product. The customer pays good money to get our eyeballs in front of their ads. It is not unreasonable for broadcasters to take steps to make sure the product they are offering is worth it to their customers so that these customers continue to give them money.
Writing laws that prevent manufacturers from making hardware that consumers want to buy is, by and large, wrong.
I agree 100%. This article isn't about writing laws, though, it is about broadcasters and Tivo teaming up to try and get more ads in different places so there is a better chance that they will be seen. There is no law requiring Tivo to display banner ads while you fast forward through commercials.
I sure as hell can, because my ToS with Time-Warner Cable says nothing about agreeing to watch advertising. I pay for them to put a signal into my home, if they subsidize the signal with ads, that's their problem. If I don't watch the ads, they can't do anything about it.
If businesses decide ads aren't working and they stop running them, the cable company can feel free to change their rates, then I can decide if I still want their service.
I guess I should revise my original statement to "You cannot expect the right to continue to watch TV programs that are funded by advertising dollars while at the same time refusing to watch the advertising".
You are right, they can put ads in the middle of shows, they can put ads on your Tivo while you are fast forwarding, and they can put tricky product placements in the show, but they can't force you to watch it. If more and more people avoid advertisements, broadcasters will have to change the rates they charge viewers, and you can bet that there will be people who find that unacceptable.
Y'all act like HBO doesn't put out Grammy winning shows. Shows that, unsurprisingly, are BETTER than shows on regular TV. Shows with NO COMMERCIALS. You just have to pay for the channel if you want to pay for it. Digital TV should make that easier, there are channels I'd subscribe to, and channels I don't give a flip about. I don't NEED a hundred channels when I currently only watch 20. I KNOW I only watch 20 because that's how many different channels I have a show set to record on MythTV, which I currently use to time shift shows, as well as watch them without commercials.
What is the going rate for HBO nowadays? About $10/month? If all channels in your standard digital TV package charged a similar price for commercial-free programming, TV bills would be pushing $1,000 per month.
I would love to see some kind of ala cart system where you could pick and choose specific commercial free channels from a broad range of choices (not just movie channels). It would be great if we could pay for exactly what programming we wanted without having to get a bunch of other channels thrown in the mix.
As advertising becomes less effective, it will be interesting to see how the TV business evolves.
I have a "right" to do basically whatever the hell I want to. They have a "right" to do basically whatever the hell they want to. Where their "rights" end is when they think they can force me to watch their advertisements.
Nobody is forcing you to do anything. There is no ad police that will force you to watch a banner ad while you are fast forwarding your tivo.
I absolutely DO have the right to watch TV programs, and ignore the ads. I signed no contract. I have no obligation. They freely put the content into my TV, and I can freely watch what I choose. Or not.
Correct. However, broadcasters are only going to provide those TV programs if they can also make a profit. They don't "freely" put content into your TV, it costs them a lot of money to do it, and the only reason they are doing it is because their customers (the advertisers) have the expectation that their ads will be seen. Once that expectation is gone, there will either be a drastic reduction in the quality and quantity of TV, or you will end up paying for it another way.
Their business model (or failure thereof) is not my responsibility.
Ah. The classic Slashdot argument. Just because somebody charges (either money or time) for something that you happen to want for free, you think you have the right to take it anyway and blame it on their "business model".
If they need to change their business model to subscription based we certainly have no right to complain, but when they go to the feds and make it illegal for us to buy a machine that skips commercials, that's totally unacceptable.
I agree that this should not be a matter of law, but I don't think that is what we are talking about here. This story is about Tivo placing ads on the screen while you are fast forwarding through commercials, not laws against skipping commercials.
Broadcasters have every right to do all they can to get you to watch commercials, just as you have every right to do all you can to avoid watching them. But my basic point is that once enough people figure out how to avoid commercials, we will end up having to pay for TV another way. It isn't free.
Their revenue stream and rights to artistic integrity end when they reach the consumer. At that point it's my signal in my device and as long as I don't rebroadcast it they need to leave me the hell alone.
That's not really the point, though. You cannot expect the right to watch TV programs that are funded by advertising dollars while at the same time refusing to watch the advertising. At some point the advertisers will not be willing to pay for it any more, and there will not be anything left to watch. It costs money to produce and broadcast TV programs, and the only way people are going to spend money on it is if it is worthwile to them. We can make it worthwile by either lending our eyeballs for a few seconds, or paying out the nose for our cable bill.
The more appropriate question is "Why is it that the glitches that favor the republican party are the only ones the media talks about".
There have been plenty of glitches that hurt the Republicans, most notably in Carteret County, N.C. where 4,500 votes were permanantly lost. Gone. Not recoverable. No recount. This county has historically voted 65% for Republican candidates, so this "glitch" cost Bush almost 3,000 votes.
No, Bush "got" 57% of the vote in that county. You are confusing an obvious error that was corrected within 12 hours of the election with the official vote tally that is on the books today.
The only correlation I see is that the cities with the highest crime rates vote overwhelmingly democratic.
Its one thing to say something. Its another to produce evidence and logical reasonings, to back up said comments. Palast, apparently, does both.
The only problem is that the evidence that Palast "produces" is wrong.
Kinda like when he wrote an article in Salon.com blaming Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris for the voter purge list, forcing Salon.com to quickly issue a correction stating that the voter list was commissioned before Harris and Bush took office.
By the way, "producing" is the correct word to use for the evidence that Palast uses. He certainly doesn't "find" or "discover" or "uncover" any evidence. Everything he claims is obviously manufactured.
In The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Palast details how the felon purging of the voter lists was subcontracted out to a private corporation that could refute inquiries by claiming that revealing details of its operations would compromise trade secrets, proprietary information. Nevertheless, Florida chose to contract out this service.
It is interesting how Palast somehow blames this on Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris, when in reality the contracting of this voter list was mandated by the Florida Legislature in 1997, before Bush or Harris were even in office. The private corporation was selected by Ethel Baxtor, the Democrat director of elections, before Bush or Harris took office. Florida State Law provided no way for the Governor or Secretary of State to remove names from voter registration rolls. This is clearly the responsibility of the County Election Supervisor. Yet Greg Palast blamed Bush and Harris for the people who were supposedly removed from the voter registration rolls.
You would think that an unbiased "investigative reporter" would at least have gotten these simple facts correct.
This "conclusion" was not based on evidence. The commission did not hear testimony from a single person who was incorrectly denied the right to vote because of this voter purge list, and yet the concluded that there was "widespread disenfranchisement and denial of voting rights". Does that sound like a reasonable conclusion based on the evidence they heard?
The have a chapter in their report entitled "First-Hand Accounts of Voter Disenfranchisement" in which they document people denied the vote...The page is full of stories from individuals and poll workers, all named.
Our discussion is about the accuracy of the Felon list, and people who were not allowed to vote because of they were incorrectly identified as convicted felons. The testimony detailed in these first hand accounts does not include anybody who fits this catagory.
This is, admittedly, completely off topic, but I find it odd that any state would deny the vote to felons who had served their time. Why not just let them vote?
I think this is a valid question, however Florida is not an exception. 46 states have laws restricting the voting rights of convicted felons, and 10 states (including Florida) have laws that permanantly remove voting rights unless they are restored by an executive clemancy board. The 14th Amendment clearly gives states the right to deny voting rights to people who have committed crimes.
African Americans had a significantly greater chance of being listed on Florida's mandated purge list. The probability of names of African Americans appearing on the list in error was significantly greater than the likelihood of the names of whites being erroneously included on the purge list.
The state of Florida's use of this purge list, combined with the state law that places the burden on voters to remove themselves from the list, resulted in denying countless African Americans the right to vote.
... the /losing/ argument. The conclusion of the majority report stated.
You are confusing two distinct situations. Nobody is claiming that the DBT list contained false positives -- it is clear that it did. However, there are no documented cases of legitimate voters actually being denied the right to vote as a result of this list. The USCCR certainly didn't receive testimony from anybody who were not allowed to vote.
In addition, those statements that you quoted are misleading at best and blatantly wrong at worst. Whites were almost twice as likely to be incorrectly included on the felon list than blacks. An evaluation of the Miami-Dade felon list revealed that 5.1% of the blacks on the list were identified as mistakes and cleared to vote, but 9.9% of the whites on the list were identified as mistakes. The error rate for Whites was nearly double the error rate for blacks.
Translation: we [the Gov. and SecOfState] can fuck up as much as we want, and blow a few million of taxpayer's money, because it's the counties fault if they actually use the list we give them.
Brilliant defense, there.
You can translate that however you want, but the simple fact is that for the 2000 election, Florida State Law placed the burden of voter registration rolls soley on the county election supervisor. There was a clear procedure set up by the Florida legislature where the supervisors were to verify, contact, and review all of the names that appeared on the list. State election officials had absolutely no say in who ended up on the registration rolls.
No, I was countering the argument that the sole responsibility for maintaining voter rolls is on the counties. Federal law places the responsibility on the state, not the county. It doesn't matter what Florida law says anymore, since it's been pre-empted by federal law.
Right, and this still has absolutely no bearing on what happened in the 2000 election.
Very clever of you to quote from the dissent, there. You know
Nope. Thats not from the dissenting statement. That is directly from the Majority's Executive Summary of the report. Reading the report only makes the following clear:
The USCCR did not claim that Jeb Bush or Katherine Harris stole the election or consipired to disenfranchise voters
The USCCR did claim that many black voters were disenfranchised
The USCCR did not provide any solid evidence proving their claims of disenfranchisement beyond flawed statistical analyis and anecdotal evidence
The report generated a harsh dissenting statement from the minority commission members who sharply disagreed with the conclusion of the majority
Say to yourself "the ends do not justify the means". Now say it again. Try it a few more times until it sinks in. If I toss out 19 legitimate voters for every 1 felon, that's not even close to making a halfway decent effort. I can fault them for being wrong 95% of the time. If you're wrong in school 95% of the time, you don't even come close to passing. You fail. And I can fault them for foisting a failure of a list onto county officials.
While you are claiming that 19 legitimate voters were "tossed" in order to get 1 felon off the list, the USCCR failed to find a single person who actually was not allowed to vote as a result of being incorrectly identified as a felon. On the other hand, the Miami Herald estimated that 5,600 felons illegally voted in Florida because the felon lists were scrapped in some counties.
OK, if it's not the responsibility of the state to maintain voter rolls, what the hell were they doing spending $2.3 million of taxpayer money to make a list of people that shouldn't have been on the county rolls? The sure sounds like the state trying to have its say in maintaining the voter lists.
Florida election law is very clear that voter registration rolls are maintained by the elected County election supervisors. The statewide maintenance list was generated as a result of a law passed by the Florida Legislature (before Jeb Bush was in office, by the way), and was to be sent to county election supervisors for action.
And even if that was the case in 2000, it's no longer true. The Help America Vote Act requires states to centralize their voter database as of 01/2004.
Wait. You are faulting Jeb Bush in the 2000 election because Florida did not follow a law that went into effect 3 years after the 2000 election?
Man, they really gave Palast the smackdown there. He and his "crackpot theories" of deriliction of duty on the part of the Gov. Bush and Sec. Harris. Yep, that Commission really cleared their names.
Greg Palast claims that Jeb Bush and Catherine Harris "stole" the election for G.W. Bush. The commission found:
The report does not find that the highest officials of the state conspired to disenfranchise voters. Moreover, even if it was foreseeable that certain actions by officials led to voter disenfranchisement, this alone does not mean that intentional discrimination occurred
As to the rest of the commissions claims that you provided, I will refer you to the Dissenting Statement of Abigail Thernstrom and Russell G. Redenbaugh for a complete rebuttal.