Advance publicity for Something Wicker This Way Comes
Shocking truth about Gleen(s) exposed!
Slartibartfast says:
“My one-sentence book review: one of the greatest strawman massacres of all time.”
Bill M:
“[T]he most vigorous attack on straw since the Big Bad Wolf. ”
Not a photoshop: straw man crucified by Gleen(s)
and his Gluppet Army
Hay now. That’s glenocide.
That reminds me of this cheering news.
Is it true that Glen’s Indian name is “Short Straw”?
Glenn. Glenn Greenwald’s Indian name.
Margaret Hamilton’s estate called. They want to make sure nobody puts her line, “Have a little fire, Scarecrow!”, in Gleenwald’s mouth.
yeah , you guys are correct.
I would not worry about anything either.
Glenn is an idiot, if he or people like him think in vain they can ring the bell of awareness to an average resident.
Laugh away guys, call him paranoid…
Oh, and Yoo is just some low level low life asshole, who volunteered his opinion to unsuspecting anything wrong poor Addington and Cheney, not that they actually ordered analysis from somebody with the known views on presidential unlimited powers with crushed child’s testicles…
The Torture Meme… Now with crushed child’s testicles, no less!
presidential unlimited powers with crushed child’s testicles…
And some of them fermented cream puffs?
and a slide of whiffle bat stew! sasha – mother russia is calling, sir.
did the phone call came right to your house at 3 a.m. ?
Is Putin calling everybody available and willing to support authoritarian unlimited powers ? Good Luck, you will be there in good
company…AH
“Glenn is an idiot, if he or people like him think in vain they can ring the bell of awareness to an average resident.”
Pretty much, yeah.
Think about it. Supposing he has something he feels is important to say to the average resident, could he pick a better way to fail to get that important message heard?
Or is the message far less important than the righteousness of Glenn?
related
h/t gail
hopefully the comment monster won’t eat this.
Him blow down yellow hay then make green Wicker… Crow no trust Short Straw.
did the phone call came right to your house at 3 a.m. ?
Is Putin calling everybody available and willing to support authoritarian unlimited powers ? Good Luck, you will be there in good
company…
Who do you think tortured more people, sashal, Bush’s CIA or Saddam Hussein? What rationale do you think they used in deciding who the tortured? What methods they used? Or…
WHY THEY MOTHERFUCKING DID IT!!!
If any of that shit is confusing to your absolutist ass then take it back to Putin and let him explain it to you. Otherwise take you sanctimonious shit over to Salon because I am getting pretty fucking tired of it.
Got to the post late and my blood was boiling at sashal. Scrolled down and saw B Moe’s response. Feel better now. Not the verbiage I would use, but certainly the same intent. Sashal, go pound sand. B Moe rocks!
Sashal, I served with Gleen(s) Greenwald; I knew Gleen(s) Greenwald; Gleen(s) Greenwald was a friend(s) of mine. Sashal, you’re no Gleen(s) Greenwald; none of them.
Got to the post late and my blood was boiling at sashal
Nay, Big D: somewhat pitiably, poor sashal still says only what he is told to say = the correct-speak, but dictated now by the Progressive Cult, sashal’s new master.
sashal doesn’t really like it, so this aspect is directed at us instead. sashal is merely projecting. But it’s the best sashal can do, and sashal probably knows it – at some very basic level.
This is also an example of self-hate, or of the lacking of what is otherwise a very important component of self – the capacity for self reflection and guidance.
B Moe,
Who do you think tortured more people, sashal, Bush’s CIA or Saddam Hussein? What rationale do you think they used in deciding who the tortured? What methods they used?
Thanks for the question with self admission.
Of course Saddam tortured more. But comparison should be not about more or less, but anything and none at all on our side, see what I mean , buddy?
And that is not even the point I was making, personally I would not be too upset if the few assholes got slapped around (especially when it is KNOWN fact that they are assholes, otherwise it will be embarrassing, no?) , just like you.
What bothers me and the most people is the unlimited power some want the president to have in deciding these question, and the willingness of many freedom loving Americans to go along with it…
sashal:
What bothers me and the most people is the unlimited power some want the president to have in deciding these question, and the willingness of many freedom loving Americans to go along with it…
Can you please, please, please show us where anyone on this site–or hell anywhere other than in your Soviet-induced imagination–has advocated granting the president unlimited powers?
If you don’t mind the action in select, appropriate situations, who do you suppose ought to decide when we’ve got one of those?
I think the President, with Congressional oversight, is as good as it’s going to get. How would you have it, sashal?
cowboy, that would that Yoo fella , his bosses and you guys indirectly, laughing at us guys bothered by it;
pablo, does congress have the spine to do it? Last years showed-no….
Otherwise that would be ideal, just like the constitution intended, agree…
sashal, you are ruled by paranoia, which is a form of projection, and makes you perfect fodder for the Progressive Cult, which excells at blaming someone else for its own depravities – the ultimate aim of which is to gain control and then do exactly what it fears to others.
What you fear is your self, or lack thereof. You are the source of your own torture/fears. You will not win.
But comparison should be not about more or less, but anything and none at all on our side, see what I mean , buddy?
Yeah, you don’t have the capacity to make reasoned decisions, so you prefer zero tolerance flow charts to guide you through life. Fine, but don’t try to force it on the rest of us. I prefer to let the guys on the tip of the spear have some leeway, and judge it on a case by case basis.
Sashal, if I were you, I’d seek counseling. You’re way too fixated on crushed testicles. That can’t be healthy.
Bullshit. They disagreed with the line you’d draw. That doesn’t mean you’re right and they’re wrong.
Get over yourself; you’re not all-knowing, you’re not the most moral person evah.
Rob #25, of course I am not most moral.
I have the same human fallacies as all of you, I love the revenge, i love the death penalty, i distrust muslims in general(sorry I am), even though I realize many are just the same normal human beings,
I love to make profit in my business, even if i have to cut the legs from my competition across the street, etc, etc,.
But that’s why this greatest country in the world was created as the country with the rule of laws, not humans….
Are you getting my position now, bud?
I am human , I am sinful and fallible, and if I want to live in the best country in the world, I will let the laws rule me….
I have the same human fallacies as all of you
I have foibles.
I have the same human fallacies as all of you
Only moreso.
sashal, wtf do you think you are doing or accomplishing here amongst the mentally healthy? Do you seek to bond with your therapists.
And what is your day job, if any?
[…] Crushed Testicle Thread. Posted by Dan Collins @ 6:52 am | Trackback Share This […]
“Comment by J. Peden on 4/10 @ 6:08 am #
sashal, you are ruled by paranoia, which is a form of projection, and makes you perfect fodder for the Progressive Cult, which excells at blaming someone else for its own depravities – the ultimate aim of which is to gain control and then do exactly what it fears to others. ”
I like this version of the same thought:
“It was only *after* the soviet regime became unmistakably totalitarian that English intellectuals, in large numbers, began to show interest in it. Burnham, although the English Russophile intelligentsia would
repudiate him, is really voicing their secret wish: the wish to destroy the old equalitarian version of Socialism and usher in a hierarchical society where the intellectual can at last get his hands on the whip.”
-George Orwell
Then why won’t you point out what laws were broken that make you believe Bush, etc. will be charged with war crimes? Don’t wave generally in the direction of what you assume applies; come up with specific laws. You don’t even have to do your own work; I’m sure others have laid it out.
If you can’t find any specific laws, then continuing to believe there’s a war crimes case against anyone in the Bush administration is, bluntly, taking a position against the rule of law.
All right, everybody take a deep breath while I chat with my friend sashal.
I do appreciate your point of view vis a vis torture because of your background. The reason you have frustrated so many of the good commentators here is that you’ve missed the point of the posts. We’re not talking about torture or what constitutes torture or what powers the president has or should have or shouldn’t have or any of the whole imperial presidency fingernail pulling oligarchy.
This post was about Glen Greenwald’s interpretation of the meaning of the Yoo memo and what its effect was on presidential powers and how it reflected the legal responsibilities of the parties involved.
You chose to take that criticism as some kind of a blanket assent for torture and unlimited presidential powers, a point of view that is not, in any way, supported by the comments on this and other threads. You have, in effect, allowed your ingrained emotions to fight a position that simply does not exist and has very little to do with the original topic.
You have taken an absolutist position on torture and the entire Iraq policy and have made it clear that the above are emotional issues for you because of your past experiences. I understand that and I think most others do as well, even if we might disagree with your zero tolerance conclusion. Perhaps someone will write a post about interrogation policy, executive powers and what constitutes “torture” and under what circumstances should “it” be used, if at all. I think that would be an interesting topic, but it’s not the question we are considering.
This is about Glen and his (to me) clearly partisan, unsupported and dishonest approach to interpreting the memo in the light of public policy. He states conclusions unsupported by any facts, uses phrases like “war criminals” with a bug eyed certainty at odds with any reasonable historical interpretation of the phrase and piles on his critics as biased right wing ‘thugs rather than engaging them in anything resembling a supported debate. This continuous pattern in his writings speaks volumes about his massive ego, dishonesty and reliability as an opinionator, committed to purple prose and !1!TEH OUTRAGE!1! at the expense of reasoned critical thinking. Throw in the whole sock puppet kerfuffle and you have a relatively easy target for mocking and snark.
Try to see the topic of discussion rather than tattooing strawman points of view upon those taking their swipes at the Gleens.
What BJ said.
And again, it doesn’t seem to me much of a power-grab when the White House asks the DOJ to prepare a memo to (A) tell it where the law is now on this subject, and (B) tell it whether or not it can do policy X, Y, or Z.
That sounds like a healthy respect for the rule of law and a desire to stay within the law or a reasonable, supportable interpretation of the law. As grounds for an imperial presidency and the start of a fasicistic torture state it is a bit lacking.
thank you, BJTex. I got it. That was about Glenn.
My friend, I do not really care about Glenn as much as you guys think.
I read as much Corner, HotAir as I do Salon.
If I wanted to post in the echo chambers, where my views on Iraq war will be in absolute majority, I would post over there.
Here is the challenge to me , to post on the blogs with predominantly opposing views. And I like challenge , I like to test how well or not I can defend my views, and may be some of you can teach me a thing or two.
For example discussions with you were absolutely fascinating.
Rick Locke had a couple great posts to me. And so on.
BJTex, my views on the war with Iraq were formed way long before I knew anything about Glenn, as I mentioned elsewhere I was fiercely critical of Clintons and the war over Kosovo( not the Bosnia, btw-different reasons and history here).
All this other topics of torture , habeas corpus, etc, inMHO are subservient to unjust war with Iraq.
Like I said I personally do not mind the KNOWN terrorists be slapped around , but I do not want my emotions(or somebody else’s -and I understand the desire to inflict on them as much pain as possible-I am the same, BJTex) to overrule the laws.
Rob asked me a good question- to show which laws has been broken.
Just check todays’ post at Balkinization in regards to torture.
And if I will find more I will keep you posted
Rob asked me a good question- to show which laws has been broken.
It’s hopeless, but: sashal, apart from Abu G., why don’t you also show us when and where the trials took place?
And there you have it, sashal, the core. “Unjust war”.
It is a fundamental law of the Universe that if A = B, it follows absolutely that B = A.
Saddam Hussein and his followers were murderers, rapists, torturers, genocidists, and destroyers of Teh Sacred Environment. If it was unjust to remove them from power, if there is no moral justification for doing so, it follows that Saddam was perfectly within his rights, perfectly justified, in doing those things — and it follows from that that murder, rape, torture, genocide, and the rest are morally neutral, with no moral or ethical weight, to be used when the mood strikes.
Yes, I know you’re going to try to weasel out of that, because you’re confused in your own mind, but you cannot. You have accepted, and declared, an absolutist position: the war was and is unjust with no qualifiers; the war has absolutely no moral justification, full stop, end paragraph, end essay, close discussion. Stopping the poison-gassing of Kurds counts for nothing. Releasing ten thousand people whose mildest suffering at Abu Ghraib was splinters under the fingernails, exhuming bodies buried there so that their relatives and friends had to walk over them in a culture where showing the soles of one’s shoes is a deadly insult, is of zero weight. Not negligible weight, not insufficient weight, zero weight — their suffering and its release counts for nothing. They don’t count as “people” in your estimation; they don’t even count as animals, for whose maltreatment PETA might be willing to call people to account. They are nothing, nonentities, nonexistent. That’s what the absolutist “no moral justification” means. And you claim moral superiority for holding that position.
Furthermore: If A = B, and B = C, then A = C. If Saddam Hussein was perfectly moral, perfectly justified, in using torture at whim — which, despite weaseling and Jesuitry, is precisely what you are declaring — upon what rule of justice or equity do you base denying George Bush the same powers and privileges? Never mind any moral aspect of torture — you have already declared that gassing fifty thousand Kurds, destroying the habitat and livelihood of twice that many Marsh Arabs, flaying people alive, cutting off limbs and sex organs, and similar diversions are absolutely moral, because you declare that there is no moral justification to ending those practices. What you are declaring is that Saddam was superior to Bush in the same existential way that I and my fellows once declared that white people were superior to blacks. And again, you claim moral superiority by virtue of that declaration.
My reaction? F* you and the white horse you rode in on, with your Sword of Absolute Justice. I call you apologist, ally, and accessory to the worst, most offensive betrayers of moral and ethical standards on the planet, and thereby an adopter of their practices; just too finicky and elitist to get your own personal sacred hands dirty, so you appoint deputies to do it for you, and pretend it’s nothing to do with you.
Regards,
Ric
Jeebus, Satchel (A much better fit than your other handle)!
When do you plan to become an adult?
Inducing fear in some piece of human offal is in no way related to real torture. If someone wants to kill my family, I will do whatever it is that I have to do – and screw what the Satchels of the world think. WOW! Putting panties on someone’s head is TORTURE? C’mon, you stupid twit.
Torture is pulling out fingernails, hooking electric cords to genitals, cutting fingers off. Humiliation is TORTURE? Give me a fuckin’ break, moron.
I love it when assholes like you think that barbarians are going to spill their guts if you just give them a Chateau Briand and Cristal dinner.
You are nothing more than a joke, and are too in love with yourself to see that your masters are using you. Reality might suck, but reality IS reality, and you apparently have no desire to look beyond your zipper to see it. Do you get a lot of that “stuff”? Acting stupid to aquire stupid IS stupid, Comrade.
The world is a dangerous place, bubblehead. But I guess not for those who are trapped in the sixties…
TLD–
Ixnay on the Atchelsay.
the first most illogical post ever came from Rick’s writing.
Sophistry is not your strong suit.
Is it the proper business of the United States government to use its military so that people in other nations can be liberated from repressive governments? Quite simply, no, it isn’t. That isn’t what our government exists to do. It should use its military to defend our country, any allies with which we may have defense treaties and vital resources. It cannot liberate other peoples because it is a kind of war that not only goes far beyond what our government is supposed to be doing and engages in conflicts that it has no right to involve our people in, but also because it harms the United States in the process.
More basically, any such intervention is, by definition, an act of aggression by one state against another. An intervention with the stated goal of regime change is even more obviously an act of aggression. This has no justification in international law and clearly violates international law in its infringement on the sovereignty of another state.
Aggressive war cannot be moral and it cannot be just. To choose war, as our government indeed did, is to choose to unleash all the horrors of war on people who have done no lasting, grave or permanent harm to us. They may or may not be wretched, awful people. They may or may not be tyrants. Whether they are or not is actually irrelevant to the question of whether our government has the right to commit aggression against another state. The bottom line is that the attacked state has done nothing to deserve our attack on it. How much less, then, do the civilians killed in the process deserve it? How can a war of aggression ever be “worth†the moral stain that it entails? How can unleashing hell on earth without cause ever be worthwhile? It cannot be
The bottom line is that the attacked state has done nothing to deserve our attack on it.
Saddam fired on US planes thousands of times. Thousands.
Next.
So, sashal, better to live a slave than die a free man?
Or is it, “better for them to die as slaves, than for my ‘moral purity’ to be stained”?
You declared Ric’s comment “illogical”, but then you restated it in your own words. Ironic.
I really do think you don’t comprehend the difference between European conservatism and American conservatism. American conservatives see liberty as a universal good, a matter so important that, yes, we’re willing to sully our morals to expand it.
Though he was a Brit, he was of the same strain that produced the American Revolution, so this John Stewart Mill quote is apropos:
SBP, there’s also that “state sponsor of terrorists” thing. s’long as we’re makin’ a list. again.
Sashal –
I just found a post of yours that I hadn’t seen before I posted.
I apologize for my excess, but only if you are serious. If you are, I admire your pluck, and I think you are about halfway here already.
You must be able to see that wartime is different than peacetime. I hear so much about the assault on our rights, but NO ONE has ever shown me a concrete example of any individual who’s rights have been violated. It’s all puffery from people who want to run our lives, just like the Soviets ran the USSR (into the ground, I might add).
I consider Abu G. to be an abberation (and it was) of what we do with our prisoners. There are actually “detainees” at Gitmo who don’t WANT to go home.
Do not be fooled by the constant hammering of the press, because they, too, are blind to the reality of the world. Journalists (and I use the word loosely), for the most part, are there because they “want to make a difference”. As a result, we get mostly propaganda in our MSM.
Keep walking. If you truly know what the Soviet system was like, I think you should be able to see where the left is trying to take us. Freedom is not cheap, and by no means is it free.
” TLD–
Ixnay on the Atchelsay.”
OMG! I didn’t realize it!
Shit! Now I am an “-ist” or a “-phobe”, things I have always taken pains to avoid.
Thanks for the heads up, Dan. AND for saving my soul. I knew not what I had wroth!
s’long as we’re makin’ a list. again.
Indeed. Nothing more irritating than someone repeating the “Saddam never attacked us” lie.
There are quite a few Air Force pilots who would disagree with that, to put it mildly.
Sorry, sashal, but it’s foolishly ignorant to approach the matter from that direction. Forming your argument on that basis is a loser.
In 1991 Iraq invaded an American ally, Kuwait. We then had a fairly brief war, which by your own statements was entirely legal and just, with the goal of throwing the invaders out. It was successful.
Wars end with treaties. Saddam never signed a surrender treaty, only a cease-fire which he then proceeded to violate on a regular basis, coupled with agreements to (e.g.) stop working on poison gases and other WMD and allow U.N. inspections to confirm that he had done so. He never lived up to any of those agreements. In fact, he never conceded defeat, going so far as to inform the world that he had won the war because he was still in office and Bush I was not.
So from a purely legalistic viewpoint, the present conflict is not a new war; it is simply a continuation of the 1991 war after a twelve-year cease-fire that was violated repeatedly and defiantly by Saddam. There are multiple UN resolutions to that effect; more importantly from your point of view, there is the specific declaration of Usama bin Laden, who gave American attempts at enforcement of the cease-fire as one of his justifications for 9/11.
And beyond that, I call you poltroon. What you are telling us is that, by your arguments, anyone who can gain control of a nation-state is thereby given a blank check to behave in any way that suits his fancy. If that is a superior moral or ethical stance on your planet, I’m glad I don’t live there. And again, if A = B then B = A; if Saddam, by virtue of having reached a position of power in Iraq, was thereby granted the power to flay his enemies alive without let or hindrance, how do you attempt to deny George Bush any least privilege? Saddam was a head of state, and by your logic thereby attained a position of unassailable moral virtue; George W. Bush is also a head of state. How do you justify different treatment?
Regards,
Ric
sashal: You are setting yourself up because, once again, you are taking a page from the Gleens’ rhetorical book with regards to expressing your opinions.
You did not answer Ric’s perfectly reasonable take on your use of the word “unjust,” instead choosing to wander off into an entirely different justification for your absolutist position using absolutist language. If you are going to use the term “unjust” then be prepared to deal with both sides of the “justice” issue.
Also, your opinion lacks some key facts, UN resolutions and numerous violations of same by Saddam. In addition, the Oil for Food fiasco where Saddam was buying influence from European countries, Russia and the UN while many of his people continued to starve created a moral imperative. The question of WMD’s, still not completely and definitively resolved (should we believe Saddam when he told his FBI questioner that there were “never any” WMD’s and it was all a scam to fool Iran?) Even the countries opposed to military intervention in Iraq agreed with the intelligence that went back to pre-1998. We also know from the slowly being translated audio tapes of Saddam’s meetings that he was pursuing some kind of an operational connection with international terrorists like al qaeda (and others) and openly discussed the use of radioactive materials or chemical agents in overseas attacks, specifically against the US (although expressing concerns that Iraq’s role in such needed to be carefully hidden.)
Is all of the above a drop dead end game justification for invading Iraq? No! But it does provide an even handed recitation of facts in support without going to some absolutist argument like “Saddam was a thug, we needed to kick his ass!” We haven’t even begun to explore the geo-political advantages to national security of a pro western non theocracy in the middle of the Middle East.
What’s going to happen, sashal, is that everytime you offer a morally absolutist position you’ll be asked to defend it here, rather than at the left sites who will cheer you on. We don’t tend to cotton to moral absolutes from either end of the political spectrum.
Damn you ric and your flying fingers!!;-P
[…] Locke, in a most excellent comment, derails the pious sanctimony of “torture” hysterics vis a vis Saddam and his forcible […]
Let’s see if sashal “learns something” from those most excellent take down and aparts of postmodern moral hazzards and psychiatric denials.
Meanwhile, I only want you, sashal, to answer the most simple of questions: what is your business?
I declare Ric Locke the winner.
sashal, you keep using the word “logic”. It does not mean what you think it means. May I suggest that you acquaint yourself better with the words you intend to use prior to your actually doing so?
I’m late to the party, but I wanted to make a comment. Ric is right on factual grounds, but not on logical grounds. In a nutshell, Ric thinks that the following is a logically valid argument:
1. It was unjust of the U.S. to remove Saddam from power.
2. There was no moral justification for the U.S. to do so.
3. Therefore, Saddam was within his rights and perfectly justified in committing various atrocities.
Since Greenwald et al. accept (1) and (2), Ric concludes that they must also accept (3). The problem is that (3) doesn’t follow logically from (1) and (2). For an argument to be logically valid, the content of the conclusion must be found in the premises. (3) isn’t found in the premises, so the argument is invalid. Ric’s points against (1) and (2) are dead on, but his claim that Greenwald et al. have to accept (3) misses the mark.
[…] it’s too good to let pass without posting it here. Found on Cold Fury is a comment from one Ric Locke. I’m pretty sure I’ve quoted Mr. Locke before, and reading this quote shows why. And […]
THE SCARECROW PHOTO USED ABOVE IS FROM THE ARTIST AT PUMPKINROT.COM. IT’D BE NICE IF YOU GAVE CREDIT.