k wrote:
I expect them to lie because damn near everything the government has ever said about this war has been a lie. I read as much as you do, I just don't choose to swallow what's being served up. It's as simple as that.

It seems that if this change in tactics was successful as a matter of fact it would be absolutely impossible to convince you of that. You'd assume those who said so were lying.

The few honest people either got cut out politically for saying what they thought or else shut up until they could get themselves in a safe position to speak out.

That is true. Most of that, however, was Rumsfeld's doing. He is gone now. Some things may have changed.

That isn't what I said. I said that politics are unrelated to the short term efficacy of our tactics change.

Short term efficacy is irrelevant.

Sometimes these arguements can get a little hard to follow. I don't care if you think the short term efficacy is irrelevant. This guy on TV said "the short term tatics change is working." Media matters accused him of lying, because the long term political situation isn't working. But his statement wasn't about the long term political situation. It was about the short term tatics change. It doesn't matter whether or not you think the short term tatics changes is important. What matters is that he was clearly refering to the short term tatics change, and Media Matters knew that he was talking about the short term tatics change, and yet they acted as if he was talking about the long term political situation in order to mislead their readers. Media matters is engaging in exactly the sort of spin that they accuse other people of doing. They respond to a statement about X with a comment about Y. They deliberately conflate X and Y to confuse their readers and to draw attention away from the idea that there might be positive news related to X.

If the surge had tripled our force there, I probably still would've been angry about it, but I wouldn't have been as quick to claim it wouldn't work.

Its not a linear numbers game. Its not simply re-enforcement. Its a tactics change. Its about who is doing what where and how. Looking at numbers is an oversimplification.

Yeah, it is. What's your point? That kid should've been fucking replaced with a sensible adult after he was proven untrustworthy. How's that analogy?

Sure, he should have, but the towns people still had an interest in protecting their sheep, and they also failed to indentify when the wolf was real, and they lost their sheep because of it. The moral of the story is just because they're full of shit doesn't mean they're wrong.

RE: Obsidian Wings: Bush's Speech