I did that? I didn't mean to. When did I do that?
You suggested what I claimed I had as evidence did not in fact exist. You also switched around what you said so as to misrepresent what I said.
Right the IF Blair did x to prevent y, and y happened then Blair failed. However, Blair didn't do x to prevent y.
Yes, we have already established that he in fact did not do that. I doubt he even ever thought that he in fact had done that. That is not the problem. The fact is that after what he did do was shown to be a failure, he has since begin to contrive, invent, post hoc rationalize why he did what he did... that is the F'ing problem I am pointing out!
So try to stay with this. He did not do X to prevent Y. We both agree that if he had done X to prevent Y that would have been stupid. Yet post X he has been publicly stating that it was and has helped prevent Y. He has gone as far as to back the idea (publicly with Bush) that since Y has not occured, that shows that X was successful.
That alone should have been, and indeed was as I have shown, lambasted by the British. You yourself should be critical of it. And now Y does happen, removing his post hoc reationalization completely.
I said "its silly to say x" and you said "Thanks, for supporting my position", and I say "So you think x is silly?"
And you do it again... You did not say it is silly to say X. You said it was silly to do X to prevent Y. That is if we are still using the same X as above and you haven't switched it to something else. It was silly to do X to prevent Y, and even a post hoc rationalization that X was to prevent Y would be silly.
You tried to turn it around into it being silly to say that he would have said that.
what it clearly shows is that "I've never heard that self-defence rationale used by anyone, including Blair". I was totally open to it having been used. I was trying to demonstrate that the self-defense rationale hasn't been particularly championed in the UK...he certainly failed to reach me with that message, and I do tend to keep my eyes open.
What a way to try and back out of a position. Look there is no escaping the fact that the above means you THOUGHT no one had used that rationale. You keep your eyes open and you have never heard anyone say it, it never reached you. That means you THOUGHT no one had used it. Yes you COULD be wrong, but you did not THINK you were wrong. You thought that I was.
That's why you "had" to ask for evidence.
Prepare to be darned
???? I said I'd be darned if your statement could be read any other way, and what you did is talk about what Blair has said. The two have nothing to do with each other. Though I must admit with some humor that you are now admitting that what you were doubting he had said, he in fact has been saying.
To me, prevent seems to be a fairly 100% thing, perhaps there lies our confusion? If a vaccine prevents me from getting a disease, I won't (or would be very unlikely to) get it. However, a condom only helps prevent STDs.
Yes, this would be a point of confusion. And I'm glad you brought it up. Bush has said "prevents" and "prevented", Blair backed Bush. It is meant to create the illusion of 100% stopping of something doesn't it? Yet without actually giving a real guarantee.
Its called marketing and propaganda and pure snake-oil salesmanship. When Iraq proved not to be a protection against Hussein at all, he tried to spin it into a something that would prevent Y. But prevent doesn't actually mean stop, which means what good is it exactly? (an obvious answer would be a reduction in risk, but we will get to that later).
You suggested that Blair should resign.
Why, was asked.
Because, you said, this is evidence of yet another mistake in a long line of mistakes.
Huh?
Well, you replied, Blair said that being in Iraq has the advantage of protecting us from terrorist acts because it acts as a front line.
Wrong, wrong, and wrong.
1) I didn't say he should resign. I said IF he was DECENT he WOULD resign. I have even gone on to state that if I was going to discuss why he SHOULD resign, it would not involve this event.
2) I did not say this was evidence of another mistake in a long line of mistakes. I said that he had made numerous mistakes and this was a symbol of his mistaken statesmanship. Yes it was evidence that something had gone wrong, and that his recent metaphor was graphically undercut, but that is not saying this happened so we now have evidence of another mistake.
3) To a question of "huh"? I would have told you that you misrepresented my position in both points previously. He has offered post hoc rationale because his actions had already failed. One was a hyperbolic metaphor wholly preposterous to this kind of conflict and meant to give people a false sense of security so that they will forget the failure of that other disaster (which in fact had no connection to their security). This was a symbol that there is still risk, there is no such things as "front lines" in this conflict, and so his use of that metaphor to sell Iraq was a sham. It also then should be a symbol (to himself) that he is winging his actions and arguments for action.
Now, this leaves one of two options.
And so the strawman continues... however I will agree that this leaves Blair only two options on how to spin his metaphor. I do find it funny that you are spending so much time worrying about my opinion and use of the word "protect" or "prevent", than a statesman's use of that same imagery to cover a massive error, and you chalk that up to politics, oh well.
Iraq is the most visible position in the war on terror. It is a 'front line'. Fighting can (often does) occur behind the front the lines (Britain would be behind the front line that is Iraq). Indeed, Iraq would be the front line, the USA the second, and Britain the third. Britain was distracted with several big events and it got attacked.
This reminds me of those trying to help the Bush administration spin away the "last throes" statements by Cheney and Rumsfeld, based on what "throe" means? What I can't figure out is how you went from saying it was never said, to now trying to redefine what they meant.
1) A front line is not a "first" line, where you can say this is the first and that is teh second and that is the third. If they are equal or relatively equal sites of legitimate attack, then they are all the front line. Even the ease of hitting one area over another does not make one "front".
2) If that is what they meant then the metaphor was useless in the way they were using it. They were clearly trying to use the "most forward" and not the "most visible".
3) Fighting behind a front line is infiltration and sabotage work and not actual combat along the lines of conventional warfare. That is what terrorists work with almost exclusively, which is why talk of a front line at all in a war against terrorists is the height of stupidity. Even as a metaphor it is an oxymoron when one combines it with geographical conflicts.
4) How on earth can you even consider Iraq the most visible part of this war? It is practically invisible. Look at the amount of "visibility" this relatively small attack by Iraq standards generated within Western media. It dominated everything for a day, and is still front page material. 50+ dead in an Iraq bombing barely gets noticed anymore.
How does this show that?
I said that this showed a security threat still exists and that Iraq has not diverted any real resources. Forgetting for a moment you agreed that the terrorists were probably already in England, and so Iraq was not going to be able to prevent them from attacking, you cannot wipe away my comment with an appeal to potential attacks diverted.
This does show that a risk still exists, and that Iraq has not diverted and real resources. They were able to put into effect a very real attack.
Right so there were no AQ assets before the invastion. Are there any now? If there are, would they be there if we weren't? If there were none before, and some afterwards, that seems like a decent indication that at least some resources were diverted to Iraq.
You asked this question in about three different ways within your post, but I'll confine my answer to just this phrasing of it.
Unconventional Asymmetric warfare does not work like this. I would love to have a quote from Rumsfeld on this but I'm not going to bother hunting it down right now.
These organizations work in covert operation models. Single or multiple agents within a nation, recruit members and resources within a nation who in turn grow their own cells. The cells are almost independent and autonomous. In this model there is little concept of "diverting" resources to a whole other conflict.
They may very well get recruits from other nations, which will move into a third nation. That is different than drawing off manpower from one area to another. For example it is a bizarre stretch of the imagination that Syrian, Iranian, and Saudi members of the AQ-branch growing in Iraq, were originally AQ agents destined for a mission in the US.
They may get funding from some more central links, but that is not always necessary, and in most cases are not funded in such a way as to limit other prospects. Physical resources are not even always purchased but may be stolen. They are generally obtained within the country they will be used in.
For example 911 did not involve much money at all and used stolen resources within the US to inflict damage. The madrid bombings were also cheap and from what I saw on a CNN spot, involved legal explosives within Spain. It would not be surprising to find that is the same for the London bombings (even if the materials were less than legal). As the Iraq War began the head of Homeland Security in the US announced that it was unlikely anyone would bring chem-bio weapons into the US, and were more likely to just come in and manufacture it here.
Iraq provided AQ with much military equipment to plunder and use. I don't have to see AQ manifests to know this, it is stated by US officials based on what they are finding. It is also true that some potential WMD material has been pilfered by someone and could easily move into AQ hands in Iraq... and if one believes in exporting resources then moved out of Iraq to hit the US or Britain.
If we make Iraq a Shangri-La then perhaps that would show the futility of the efforts the terrorists are going through, possibly making it difficult to convince them to give up their lives for a lost cause. It wouldn't mean all terrorists would give up, but it might make recruitment more challenging.
Yeah. IF... Shangri-La, THEN. Shangri-La is a myth, so is Bush and Blair's reasoning. Hell if it they can turn Iraq into that, why can't they do it at home?
Terrorists moved in to Iraq, since they moved to Iraq, they are moving out of other places...they need to spend money on bombs and weapons and probably wages, food, bribes etc for operations in Iraq. That money is not being spent on operations in the west.
Unless they are new recruits, including Iraqis themselves, and they get bombs from munitions lying all over Iraq, and they steal or sell stolen goods to make money. I grant that they may have some money and small resources come in from outside, but then they are not going to be from already existing operations, or in any amounts likely to alter future operations in the US and Britain (or the rest of the world).
All Iraq did is open up a new source for resources, a new base to work from, and stuffed our military and diplomatic personal in a fish bowl for terrorists to attack them.
And of course all of this is to ignore the fact that some of the fighting we are engaged in, in Iraq, is with Iraqi nationals not aligned with AQ as well as criminal organizations. Obviously they are getting resources within Iraq itself, why do you think AQ in Iraq needs massive support from outside, if they don't?
holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)
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