Harold Pinter acknowledgement speech

[Occhidiangela]

Before the war, we knew that, no matter how hard we looked, we couldn't find any solid evidence of WMD whatsoever. None. They were the only possibility of Saddam being a credible threat. Unless Saddam was a threat, there was no reason to go to war.

That was clear to me before the war. It is much more clear now.
-Jester
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1. You seem to presume to a prescience based on assumption and a belief, not on facts and evidence. It is indeed much clearer now that what was thought to be true for about 6 years was not true. Hindsight is 20-20. If you want to proclaim victory in the "my hunch is ____" you win. :D Your hunch on WMD was better than mine. *imagines a WoW screen with Jester doing a Tauren victory dance* :whistling:

As with an egg: once in, never an egg again. The Humpty Dumpty soundbytes regarding Iraq are true, and as you and I discussed in some accord a few years back, were pretty easy to predict based on what Iraq was, or is, in terms of a nation state.

2. Was or wasn't a threat . . . it seems you confine your perspective to what is in front of your face, the near term. As to the mid and long term, you have the luxury as an observer to not concern yourself on the mid and long term threats.

A pacifist tends to be spring loaded to react "anything but war." That is as limited an approach as "a hammer for every nail, even the carraige bolts!" Which set of blinders one wears is a matter of choice.

I contend that the most likely outcomes, the establishment of yet another Islamic Republic in the Mid East, and a partition of Iraq, are the most likely mid term results of American armed intervention in Iraq. This segues into . . .

Is it any surprise that a hard liner was recently elected to lead the Iranian government? I imagine the "threat" briefed to the people of Iran had little to do with the threat of "a virus of democracy" breaking out in the Middle East and everything to do with "the Great Satan is coming to dominate you at the hands of their Imperialist Corporate and Zionist masters!"

Too bad I don't read Farsi, I'd like to have seen the sloganeering that went on in Iran during the last election cycle.

Not being a pacifist, I have had to deal with mid and long term threats in a modest sense, one theater of operations. To be blunt about it, it is bloody hard to get it even close to right.

The "war on terror" could have been prosecuted without invading Iraq. Had that option been chosen, the whingers would still be whinging about America taking action on that score.

Or do you forget the shrill anti war, "no blood for oil" protests in the US, and elsewhere, in the fall of 2001? Granted, the protests against the Iraq war dwarfed the objection to the Afghanistan operation, but the themes and core message was the same.

All that differed was scale. A load of crying "wolf."

Look again at my comment about crying wolf, by Pinter, Chomske and their ilk: bright men with an agenda, and a poorly veiled hatred for a sovereign America.

The problem with crying "wolf" so often, and so carelessly, is that the one time the cry of wolf might have been warranted, the wolf whinging had already been revealed as little more than attention whoring, not rhetoric of any use to policy.

Oh, and since you win the hunch match, I owe you yet another Guinness. Maybe I ought to take out a loan. :whistling:

Occhi