So yesterday's Republican Debate was Kind Of A Disaster
107 replies, posted
[QUOTE=Reshy;49741962][IMG]https://espnfivethirtyeight.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/silver-superdelegates-1.png?w=575&h=465[/IMG]
Worth noting that Clinton had a similar lead over Obama.[/QUOTE]
not similar at all
Clinton led Obama in super delegates but Obama was also Establishment friendly
Now, Clinton has nearly all of their support while Bernie has almost none
[QUOTE=rilez;49741894]Insulting GWB (and by extension Jeb) was a really, really stupid move by Trump.
I don't see how he thought that would work out. The majority of Republicans still approve of GWB...[/QUOTE]
Doesn't he always make a point in his speeches of talking to the people and not giving a fuck of the audience? I thought this was just an extension of that
[QUOTE=InvaderNouga;49741893]Great zinger and all but what he said was objectively factual.[/QUOTE]
Cheers, you too. It's still too early to declare certain victory for anyone though.
Honestly, Trump is starting to seem a lot better than the rest of these idiots.
Oh god, what's wrong with me.
[QUOTE=CatFodder;49741644]Pretty fatuous comment considering she's still the front runner for the nomination.[/QUOTE]
where do you think you are fella
trump is better on these points but is a narcissistic psychopath who'd be willing to nuke a country over a disagreement.
also let's see what happens in six days
i have a feeling nothing trump says matters and he will fucking decimate the rest
[QUOTE=rilez;49741894]Insulting GWB (and by extension Jeb) was a really, really stupid move by Trump.
I don't see how he thought that would work out. The majority of Republicans still approve of GWB...[/QUOTE]
Maybe he finally reached the breaking point where he doesn't have it in him any more to spout more bullshit.
[QUOTE=Killuah;49741789]Holy shit Trump is the one making the most sense in all of those what a Kindergarten.
[editline]14th February 2016[/editline]
They were. It's not a claim.[/QUOTE]
[url]http://anonymousmugwump.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/be-reasonable-intelligence-on-iraqi-wmd.html[/url]
Just recommending this to anyone who thinks that the WMD claims were entirely concocted. I think there was a degree of misleading the public about the certainty of the claims, but anyone who claims that it was based on nothing/purely made up to start a war is either ignorant, spouting partisan drivel, or a liar.
We know it was not entirely fabricated, but we depended on intelligence that was too wishy washy to start a war with. One of the main suppliers of information confessed to lying so that he could sic the USA on Saddam.
South Carolina is pretty much Trump's to lose at this point anyways. Cruz tanked in the polls after his shitshow last night, and Rubio and Kasich (who actually gained a lot of ground considering he was basically at nothing before the debate) despite some gains are still way behind.
Carson and Bush might as well call it a day at this point. It is pretty amazing how Carson went from second place behind Trump early into debate season to basically having no support left whatsoever.
[QUOTE=person11;49742565]We know it was not entirely fabricated, but we depended on intelligence that was too wishy washy to start a war with. One of the main suppliers of information confessed to lying so that he could sic the USA on Saddam.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE]Without relying on a single British dossier or U.S briefing, it is clear there was a reasonable case that Iraq maintained WMD; clear chemical and biological agents and an active programme for pursuing further WMD. It is why there was such wide acceptance that there was WMD. Kenneth Pollack summarises the phenomenal level of consensus:
'Somewhat remarkably, given how adamantly Germany would oppose the war, the German Federal Intelligence Service held the bleakest view of all, arguing that Iraq might be able to build a nuclear weapon within three years. Israel, Russia, Britain, China, and even France held positions similar to that of the United States'
Pollack makes clear that the view of Iraqi WMD was widespread amongst governments. Most surprisingly, it was widespread amongst officials in Saddam’s regime. Woods et al note that ‘a number of senior Iraqi officials in coalition custody continued to believe it possible that Iraq still possessed a WMD capability hidden away somewhere.’ Why did they believe this? For the same reason that I did, the UNSCOM inspectors that Pollack mentions and essentially everyone believed:
Coalition interviewers discovered that this belief was based on the fact that Iraq had possessed and used WMD in the past and might need them again; on the plausibility of secret, compartmentalized WMD programs existing given how the Iraqi regime worked; and on the fact that so many Western governments believed such programs existed.
It’s a conclusion was littered throughout independent reports from reputable think tanks:
'In September 2002, the independent, London-based think tank, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), published a dossier providing a thorough published guide to the consensus view of the period. It described the toxic materials still unaccounted for, and then moved on to the more speculative area concerning what had happened since 1998. It was possible, but not proven, that production of both biological and chemical weapons had resumed (A Choice of Enemies, p.413)'
In the next section I will go through several prominent examples of how intelligence is alleged (and was in fact) used unreasonably – but these examples don’t move away from one stark conclusion. This conclusion that that Iraq had WMD – despite being completely wrong – was a completely reasonable one. Through the prism of the presumption, the continual reports coming from various sources, Saddam’s miscalculations and policy there could not have been a different conclusion. Even if you ignored this mistakes laid out in the next section (for reasons both above and below), you’d still come out with the same conclusion. Its why we had this near-consensus. As Robert Jervis states in Why Intelligence Fails: Lessons from the Iranian Revolution and Iraq War:
'while there were not only errors but correctable ones and that analysis could and should have been better, the result would have been to make the intelligence assessments less certain rather than to reach a fundamentally different conclusion... A responsible judgment could not have been that the programs had ceased (p.124, p.155)'[/QUOTE]
Wishy-washy? Everyone thought he had WMDs. Everyone. There were disagreements over the capabilities and which ones he had, but both pro-war (UK and US) and anti-war (France and Germany) agreed that he had them. This large degree of consensus, across countries and political positions, rather suggests that the evidence was not 'wishy-washy' but rather a logical presumption with a very high chance of being correct which turned out to be wrong, on in other words, the US/UK security services were 'reasonably incorrect'. The article I linked makes clear that the security services discounted the interviews with that guy who lied (though the same was admittedly not done by the White House itself).
I would argue if there were WMDs, the war would have been completely justified. However, the (incorrect) assumption that he had them was also completely justified. As a result, when only examining the decision to go to war and ignoring the incompetence in the post-invasion stage, the war was justified in my view.
[QUOTE=cody8295;49741907]What's up with the assumption that clinton is getting the nomination? And that she's going to win?[/QUOTE]
Because Gore and Mondale already showed pretty clearly how the system works. Obama was elected because key superdelegates changed their votes, the DNC has no reason to back Sanders because he will promptly begin dismantling their power structure on both the logistical and financial level, whilst Obama played ball with the one concession of certain federal monies being routed to candidacy, which is now reversed.
Sanders has NO support in the DNC. None.
[quote] war [/quote]
The decision to go to war [B]on the ground[/B] had nothing to with WMDs and that is a fact. A fact declassified by the Freedom of Information Act, and joe bob ex CIA's [I]blog[/I] doesn't mitigate shit in that regard.
[URL]https://vimeo.com/88670339[/URL]
'That is a fact'
Laughable to claim that is a 'fact'. PS: link something that isn't a 44 minute video that I have time to look over. I can read quickly but 44 minutes is completely unreasonable.
[QUOTE=FlashMarsh;49742742]'That is a fact'
Laughable to claim that is a 'fact'. PS: link something that isn't a 44 minute video that I have time to look over. I can read quickly but 44 minutes is completely unreasonable.[/QUOTE]
are you actually saying it's not true because the source is too much work for you to get through
No, I'm saying that it is highly contestaable. Something that is a 'fact' is indisputable, which this is not, and no source at all has proved indisputably the reasons for the Iraq war. My claims are not 'fact', I just think they're more likely than the counter-arguments to be correct.
If 44 minutes hurts your face, one wonders what 4 hours of factual deconstruction by the actual people involved will do:
[URL]http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/bushswar/view/[/URL]
Guess what gets defenestrated here, and not by liberal feminazi journalists out to burn the constitution and their bras, but rather again, the actual people making the decisions.
The decision to ->occupy<- had jack to do with WMDs, which could have been dealt with from the air in a matter of hours.
I would probably agree that long-term occupation wasn't to do with WMDs. But that's not what I'm claiming. I'm arguing that a) it was reasonable to think that Saddam had WMDs b) the main reason why the US went into Iraq in the first place was WMDs c) however secondary goals also played a role, leading to the long-term occupation (in my view in part to pass the main goal of the war from WMDs to democracy promotion in the eyes of the public in wake of the lack of weapons).
Except the only two people that still stick to that narrative are Cheney and Bush.
Not even Rumsfeld can do it with a straight face anymore.
How about citing something that isn't unreasonably long then for the sake of argument to prove me wrong then.
Hold on gentlemen. I’m going to turn this car around.
...
All right, gentlemen… We’re in danger of driving this into the dirt.
[editline]14th February 2016[/editline]
Now let's ask Ben Carson a question to quiet tensions among the forum goers..
Carson should drop out
[QUOTE=Cypher_09;49742080]Doesn't he always make a point in his speeches of talking to the people and not giving a fuck of the audience? I thought this was just an extension of that[/QUOTE]
Except he usually says what people want to hear. A lot of Republican voters still really like GWB. He can't win if he alienates those people... hell, he would have a hard time winning even with their support.
His whole campaign has centered around agitating people and riding off of that. He may have agitated the wrong people this time.
[QUOTE=rilez;49743054]Except he usually says what people want to hear. A lot of Republican voters still really like GWB. He can't win if he alienates those people... hell, he would have a hard time winning even with their support.
His whole campaign has centered around agitating people and riding off of that. He may have agitated the wrong people this time.[/QUOTE]
The audiences at these things are pretty bipolar with their clapping, so I doubt this is an accurate gauge of how people reacted to his views.
[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGpXHYtkOS8[/url]
[QUOTE=Rangergxi;49743595]The audiences at these things are pretty bipolar with their clapping, so I doubt this is an accurate gauge of how people reacted to his views.
[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGpXHYtkOS8[/url][/QUOTE]
Ron was 100% on the money tho which makes this booing even worse
[QUOTE=fruxodaily;49743887]Ron was 100% on the money tho which makes this booing even worse[/QUOTE]
Actual libertarianism has no place in the current GOP establishment. Sadly the core Republican voterbase is just as senile as people claim.
The only evidence of WMDs in Iraq pointed to decades-old chemical weapons that we had given to Saddam for fighting Iran - weapons that had been sitting and likely were not usable, and even if they were, Iraq lacked any capability of delivering those weapons.
The Iraq War was entirely criminal, and most of the people involved are fully aware of that, and have at least admitted it in part.
I would take Trump over anyone running on the Republican side because he isn't 'one of them'. He's an outsider. He's been on the other side of the table from congress and the senate. He shit talks and bullies. Congress doesn't do shit that doesn't help themselves first, so if anyone can piss the leechers of the american people off, that's who I would prefer
[QUOTE=TheTalon;49744380]I would take Trump over anyone running on the Republican side because he isn't 'one of them'. He's an outsider. He's been on the other side of the table from congress and the senate. He shit talks and bullies. Congress doesn't do shit that doesn't help themselves first, so if anyone can piss the leechers of the american people off, that's who I would prefer[/QUOTE]
I'd say I die a little inside every time provides a reason this inane for supporting Trump, but if that were true, I would have died inside enough to have been internally holocausted several times over.
[QUOTE=Mingebox;49744757]I'd say I die a little inside every time provides a reason this inane for supporting Trump, but if that were true, I would have died inside enough to have been internally holocausted several times over.[/QUOTE]
All of the candidates are awful. Thats why Trump is appealing.
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