Timewaster's Guide Archive

Skar's reply to SE's reply.

1: Yes, invading a country, capturing its leader and then leaving would have been very bad.  Fortunately that is not what we are doing in Iraq so I fail to see your point, please elaborate.  Having served in Baghdad during and after the invasion I can argue rationally that all, and I do mean "all" the people that I met were very glad the U.S. had come to town.  I wasn't one of the GIs that only gets to meet pet Iraqis in the conference room either.  I conducted intelligence operations in search of the "Playing Card" Iraqis all over the city in a six man team in two vehicles.  I'm sure I couldn't make that claim had I stayed longer, the "all" part anyway, but generally the Iraqis disagree with you about America's involvement being bad for them.  

As for Afghanistan I just spent a year there and your description of it as being in a state of anarchy is far wide of the mark.  I did substantially the same thing in Afghanistan as I did in Iraq but with Special Forces teams.  I can say with authority that the country is not in a state of anarchy.  It's certainly not midwest America but things are coming under control.  The last six months I was there all of the operations I went on were in cooperation with the Afghan National Army and in a couple they provided the main impetus.  What little you do hear about Afghanistan now in the press, having been overshadowed by Iraq, is of the sensationalist, emotional appeal variety, but more on that later.

2:  So you weren't conviced by the evidence for WMD you saw in the news.  I was, and still am, we gave him a good nine months to move and/or destroy the stuff after all. But no debate possible there.  

However, you do make a valid point that a leader who doesn't hold people accountable for doing a bad job, especially on something so important, is not a good leader.  I agree with you.  I don't agree, however, that Bush isn't holding people accountable. I think the shakeup in the intelligence community over 9/11 will correct alot of the same problems that led to any bad intelligence work on WMD in Iraq.  To stir that pot some more just to look like he was doing something about the WMD thing in Iraq would be even worse leadership on Bush's part.  

On top of that, being familiar with the intelligence community and process I don't think anyone did anything wrong.  Eight years of touchy feely politics severely restricted our intelligence gathering capabilities.  You have to make calls on what information you have and we had no one on the ground, we had to work with what we had.  Again, tossing out some poor analyst as a scapegoat in order to look like you're doing something about the Iraq WMD issue would also be bad leadership.

3:I agree that all mainstream media uses the tactics I decried.  Mucho apologies for making a faulty statement.  To imply however, that Fox News (the only example I've ever heard anyone give of conservative mainstream media) constitutes "...a lot of VERY conservative media.." is stretching it a bit.  In the realm of opinion, I see FOX as weaving back and forth across the center line rather than very conservative.  I like to think that I analyze what reporters say through a lens of logic and experience and therefore can tell when something is obviously slanted.  However, I think you probably do the same thing.  So where does that leave us?   I don't know.  

I had regular contact with intelligence professionals operating in Iraq during my entire tour in Afghanistan and they all say the same thing:  What gets reported in the news about events there paints a very onesided and misleading picture of the situation.  One guy claimed that he had seen a report on three bombings that sounded like it had happened in three separate towns.  The reporter used three different names for the same general area, like talking about events that happened in Sandy, Midvale and Murray as though they were in fact in Provo, Salt Lake and Brigham City.  The bombs were actually all part of the same event.  That's deliberately misleading in order to increase the sensation of the report.  Now, the guy couldn't remember what channel he'd seen that on so take it with a grain of salt.  Dan Rather's scot-free escape from the memo incident is evidence of at least CBS's wild leaning and the big names all tend to agree with one another, FOX being an occasional exception.  Hillary Clinton spouting off about a "vast right-wing conspiracy" is not evidence the liberals in general don't think they have an ally in the media.  I mean, really...

Anyway, having ended with pure opinion, I'll quit now.  

I see the two as being interchangeable, that is why what matters most is who writes the history books. "Cold blooded murder" can be interchanged with "justified killing" depending on point of view. ...

I submit that cold-blooded murder and justified killing are not interchangeable.  As an example the Germans who killed GIs in combat in WWII are not accused of or portrayed as having committed cold-blooded murder, despite our having been the winners there and therefore having written the history books.  (atrocities aside)  

There is also a third category, not exactly cold-blooded murder but certainly not justified killing, called "crimes of passion." Hot blooded murder?  These killings create all sorts of conflict and opportunities for satisfying repentance and/or come-uppance in stories.

More apologies to the non-mormons.  Teancum killed the enemy king in his sleep twice in the BOM.  The first time he did it and escaped scot-free.  The second time he fumbled it, and got caught and killed.  The only real difference between the two incidents is that in the second one, where he died, he "...in his anger did go forth..."

So, the lesson here is that justified killing must be performed in cold-blood.