Canadian_watcher wrote:c2w I think you know the answers to all of your questions and this game is fucking tedious.
You know very well that uncovering lies and deceptions concerning major public events - events which will be relied upon by governments to justify making laws, arrests, HUGE expenditures of public funds, rescinding rights, increasing spying, forging armies and sending young men and women to die in wars as well as killing hundreds of thousands of civilians with guns and bombs and poisons and blockades - is important.
You also know very well that sometimes the things that undermine the cases of the government will come from unlikely sources and that these might, at first, seem like blind alleys and might be guarded by seemingly innocent bystanders. they will often be right in front of people's faces ie Colin Powell - I'm sure there were a GREAT many people who would have thought it beyond him to sit there and lie to the faces of the UN security council and the millions of eyes of a dozen nations whose future depended on his words. But he did. And fuck him for that, by the way.
Colin Powell was talking publicly about something that was of grave consequence to the public good precisely so that what he said would be available for public review. I thought it was bullshit, as did most people who evaluated it on its merits without regard to their preexisting beliefs about his personal virtues generally, or theirs, or the country's, or Saddam Hussen's, or -- in short -- to their feelings about plot and character, however conceived. Because anyone who did that had nothing getting in the way of their ability to perceive that since he wasn't describing an imminent threat or an act of aggression, the answer to the question "Does this information amount to a cause for war?" was "No,' even if it was true,
So, sure. Fuck him. But he couldn't have done it alone. It takes a village full of people who are only interested in asking questions that satisfy their own most immediate emotional needs to go to war because Colin Powell said something that gave them an opportunity to trade in what was left of their unassuaged fears and desires for vengeance over earlier, entirely unrelated events for the feeling that they were part of something strong, mighty and righteous.
I guess what's curious to me is that even from the perspective of self-interest, that makes about as much sense as taking your feelings about the Gulf of Tonkin out on Gene Rosen or Robbie Parker. But what can you do? That's people.
i do not know if Robbie Parker or Gene Rosen (for examples) were playing a part in an operation or not. DO YOU?
I'm so okay with not knowing that I literally have no opinion about whether there was one or if they were a part of it. Because there's literally no reason for me to have one, apart from that someone suggested it. .If I was interested in making the shit that people who don't give good reasons for what they say suggest to me my watchword, I'd take my causes-for-war from Colin Powell.
