| Topic: |
Science > Prophecies-Of-Nostradamus |
| User: |
"The Last 1800 Days -- HOOROO !" |
| Date: |
20 Dec 2007 10:48:06 PM |
| Object: |
Truth, Lies, Errors and ***** About Iraq and Iran |
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http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_walter_c_071220_truth_2c_lies_2c_errors_.htm
Truth, Lies, Errors and ***** About Iraq and Iran
December 20, 2007 at 08:46:05
Truth, Lies, Errors and ***** About Iraq and Iran
by Walter C. Uhler
http://www.opednews.com
In his thought provoking little book, On *****, Professor of
Philosophy Emeritus at Princeton University, Harry G. Frankfurt, cites
an exchange between Fania Pascal and the renowned philosopher, Ludwig
Wittgenstein: "I had my tonsils out and was in the Evelyn Nursing Home
feeling sorry for myself. Wittgenstein called. I croaked: 'I feel just
like a dog that has been run over.' He was disgusted: 'You don't know
what a dog that has been run over feels like." [p. 24]
In Professor Frankfurt's interpretation, Wittgenstein issued his harsh
rejoinder because he believed Fania Pascal's assertion was *****.
In Frankfurt's view, the essence of ***** is an "indifference to
how things really are."
Thus, whereas people who tell the truth and people who lie are
similarly concerned about the facts - in order to either expose or
deny them - the bullshitter 'is neither on the side of the true nor on
the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes
of the honest man and the liar are, except insofar as they may be
pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does
not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He
just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose." [p. 56]
Consequently, "***** is a greater enemy of the truth than lies
are." [p. 61]
Using this definition, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and
Michael Savage qualify as world-class bullshitters. And so are the
neoconservatives, whose ideological obsession with using U.S. military
power, in order to extend liberty and democracy around the world,
reeks with "indifference to how things really are" in such places as
Iraq, Iran and Palestine.
Did President Bush and Vice President Cheney really care whether their
assertions about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and ties to al
Qaeda described reality correctly? When, in the summer of 2002, Cheney
exerted pressure on intelligence officials to withdraw their doubts
about the ties between Iraq and al Qaeda, was it because he was
searching for the truth or because he was determined to have his views
ratified?
And if Mr. Cheney was interested in the truth, why didn't he request a
National Intelligence estimate (NIE) on Iraq? Why was it left to
congressional Democrats to request such an NIE in September 2002?
Granted, NIEs are rarely definitive, but they almost always yield more
intelligence about a country than any single individual can possess.
More to the point, NIEs are much more concerned with the true and the
false than are ***** politicians.
Take, for example, the November 2007 NIE on Iran's nuclear program.
New evidence provided by a senior official in the Iranian Ministry of
Defense (who had defected to Turkey in February 2007) caused the
intelligence community to reevaluate and then revise its earlier
conclusion - reported in the NIE of 2005 -- that Iran was determined
to develop nuclear weapons. The new intelligence allowed the
intelligence community to judge with "high confidence that in the fall
of 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program." Thus, "Tehran's
decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less
determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since
2005." [National Intelligence Estimate, "Iran: Nuclear Intentions and
Capabilities," Nov. 2007]
It now appears likely that President Bush "knew about that
intelligence as early as February or March 2007" [Gareth Porter, "Did
Bush Get New Iran Intel Last Winter?" antiwar.com, Dec. 18, 2007].
Yet, on 6 August 2007 our Bullshitter-in-Chief falsely asserted:
"After all, this is a government that has proclaimed its desire to
build a nuclear weapon." And in October 2007, Bullshitter Bush
asserted, "a nuclear-armed Iran might lead to World War III." ["A Blow
To Bush's Tehran Policy, Washington Post, Dec. 4, 2007]
Such ***** is reminiscent of the crap Bush was flinging in
mid-2003, when questions began to be raised about the weapons of mass
destruction NOWHERE TO BE FOUND in Iraq. Remember when the Bullshitter
told reporters in mid-July 2003: "We gave him [Saddam] a chance to
allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in." (In fact,
Saddam did let the inspectors in.)
Remember, the Bullshitter-in-Chief's interview with ABC's Diane Sawyer
in December 2003? When Ms. Sawyer pressed Bush about justifying a war
to the American public by stating "as a hard fact, that there were
weapons of mass destruction as opposed to the possibility that he
[Saddam] could move to acquire those weapons," the Bullshitter
responded: "So what's the difference?" Perhaps, this is the
appropriate time to reiterate what Professor Frankfurt calls the
essence of *****: An "indifference to how things really are."
The news media also propagates *****. Simply recall the so-called
"reporting" about Iraq by Judith Miller of the New York Times;
reporting that proved to be little more than stenography dictated by
two incorrigible bullshitters, neocon Richard Perle and Ahmad
Chalabi.
Or consider the recent column written by Kevin Ferris of the
Philadelphia Inquirer (see http://www.walter-c-uhler.com/Reviews/morons.html
). In that column, Ferris "gushes like a child and waxes euphoric
about the 'passion and enthusiasm' of President Bush - as if Bush has
ever been anything but passionate and enthusiastic, even as he has
subjected the United States and the world to the most evil and error
prone presidency in U.S. history." Like so many Americans, Ferris not
only believes that Bush is sincere, but also that sincerity trumps
objective reality - which has been a disaster.
But, "sincerity" itself, as Professor Frankfurt tells us, is just more
*****. "As conscious beings, we exist only in response to other
things, and we cannot know ourselves without knowing them. Moreover,
there is nothing in theory, and certainly nothing in experience, to
support the extraordinary judgment that it is the truth about himself
that is the easiest for a person to know. Facts about ourselves are
not particularly solid and resistant to skeptical dissolution. Our
natures are, indeed, elusively insubstantial - notoriously less stable
and less inherent than the natures of other things. And insofar as
this is the case, sincerity itself is *****." [pp. 66-67]
Finally, I suspect that Charles Gibson has been flinging *****
about the success of the "surge" on ABC's World News. Except for a
December 16th report about the British handing over control of Basra
to the Iraqis -- which contained a quote by Anthony Cordesman that
"the British are putting a good face on what essentially is a very
serious political and military defeat" and the observation by Terry
McCarthy that "Britain's non-confrontational policy in Basra left the
Iraqi security forces simply unable to control the Shiite militias,
who are making millions of dollars from oil smuggling" - Gibson has
paid more attention to the short-term tactical successes of the surge
than he has to the long-term strategic failures looming on the
horizon.
First, the surge is going to end - probably before achieving its
stated goal of providing a relative calm conducive to political
reconciliation. Today we have relative calm in Iraq, but almost no
reconciliation at the national level. Second, are the Sunnis, who
we've have funded to fight al Qaeda, eventually going to turn their
guns back on us? Or, as Douglas McGregor recently put it, "Is the
Great Awakening inside the Sunni Arab community the road to Iraq's
stability, or just a pause for Sunni rearmament and reorganization."
Mr. Gibson might have also assessed the tactical success of the surge
in the context of increased Iranian influence in southern Iraq, in the
context of Muqtada al-Sadr's order to the Mahdi Army to stand down for
six months (which ends in February), or even in the context of the
increasing tension between Turkey and the Kurds in northern Iraq. He
might have assessed the tactical success of the surge against the
immense violence, death and destruction that the U.S. unleashed in
Iraq since March 2003.
===========================
Walter C. Uhler.com
Walter C. Uhler is an independent scholar and freelance writer whose
work has been published in numerous publications, including The
Nation, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Journal of Military
History, the Moscow Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. He also is
President of the Russian-American International Studies Association
(RAISA).
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hooroo
uncle wally
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