Add Homonym Attacks! #12
Ad Hominem: Appealing to personal considerations rather than to logic or reason.
Ad Hominem Attack: An argument that focuses on a personal attack as opposed to the subject in question.
Add Homonym Attacks!: The process by which one inserts a homophone and it bites you.
(It also serves as the title to Inside Pulse’s representative column in the world of Critical Thinking, Science and Skepticism.)
Getting Political
First a quote:
Let me say a few words about important values we must demonstrate while all of us serve in government. First, we must always maintain the highest ethical standards. We must always ask ourselves not only what is legal, but what is right. There is no goal of government worth accomplishing if it cannot be accomplished with integrity.
Second, I want us to set an example of humility. As you work for the federal government there is no excuse for arrogance, and there’s never a reason to show disrespect for others. A new tone in Washington must begin with decency and fairness. I want everyone who represents our government to be known for these values.
-Bush, Oct 15, 2001
While saying this 14 people were impaled by his rapidly growing nose.
As many of you know, or could probably guess, Bush really pisses me off. No, I’m not talking about the band; I’ve no opinion of them. (Nor am I speaking about pubic hair; there is too much dirty talk around here already. I cunt take anymore. I think we’ve all had a muff of it!)
Here is what some other Kennedy recently wrote about Dubbya:
While communism is the control of business by government, fascism is the control of government by business… My American Heritage Dictionary defines fascism as “a system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership together with belligerent nationalism.” Sound familiar?
Anyways, I’ve written here before about Bush’s baffling support of some of the Religious Right’s wacky ideas #cough# Intelligent Design # cough# .
But the President seems to be an unprecedented source of evil, incompetence, and/or stupidity. Is there another explanation?
Let’s look at the war. You know the one right? The one we fought and declared MISSION ACCOMPLISHED nearly 3 years ago, and then came up with a Plan for Victory a month and a half ago?
Remember the WMDs? It’s been a year to the day just about, since we’ve admitted that they ain’t there.
This Iraq war/liberation/occupation/whatever you call it seems to be the proverbial Bermuda Triangle. We’ve lost over 2,000 soldiers. That number is probably higher than it should be though.
A secret Pentagon study has found that at least 80 percent of the marines who have been killed in Iraq from wounds to their upper body could have survived if they had extra body armor. That armor has been available since 2003 but until recently the Pentagon has largely declined to supply it to troops despite calls from the field for additional protection, according to military officials.
A while back Bush nonchalantly estimated that over 30,000 Iraqis have been killed. More freedom for the rest of them I guess.
According to an audit nearly 1 year ago, we had lost 9 billion dollars in Iraq.
NO, not spent.
We’ve spent about 230 billion.
This is money that has been lost, unaccounted for, left in another pair of trousers, missing, etc.
An inspector general’s report said the U.S.-led administration that ran Iraq until June 2004 is unable to account for the funds.
“Severe inefficiencies and poor management” by the Coalition Provisional Authority has left auditors with no guarantee the money was properly used,” the report said.
“The CPA did not establish or implement sufficient managerial, financial and contractual controls to ensure that [Development Fund for Iraq] funds were used in a transparent manner,” said Stuart W. Bowen Jr., director of the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.
On top of stuff like this thing, there is the fact that, technically, the war was illegal. You see, it was an unprovoked war not approved by the UN.
But hey, Congress voted for it, and they had the same intelligence right? Well, not really.
The Congressional Research Service [a bi-partisan Congressional research group], by contrast, said: “The president, and a small number of presidentially designated Cabinet-level officials, including the vice president … have access to a far greater overall volume of intelligence and to more sensitive intelligence information, including information regarding intelligence sources and methods.”
Unlike members of Congress, the president and his top officials also have the authority to ask U.S. intelligence agencies more extensively for follow-up information, the report said. “As a result, the president and his most senior advisers arguably are better positioned to assess the quality of the … intelligence more accurately than is Congress.”
But Colin Powell… Well, he didn’t get the same info either.
Of course, everybody who was paying attention has already heard about the DOWNING STREET MEMO, which basically proves Bush lied to start the war.
But hell, what is so wrong about doctoring a little information to start an illegal war?
Information is a funny thing. As is its flow. I’m don’t mean to get all Big Brother here, but I’m gonna have to talk about the dreaded P-word. Propaganda.
From the bipartisan column, The Top Ten Conservative Idiots:
Guess what? You’ll never believe this, but it turns out that the Bush administration has been secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to plant pro-U.S. stories.
According to the Los Angeles Times, “The articles, written by U.S. military ‘information operations’ troops, are translated into Arabic and placed in Baghdad newspapers with the help of a defense contractor.”
Who would have thought it? I mean, it’s not like the Bush administration ever did anything similar on the home front, is it? Well… apart from Armstrong Williams. And Maggie Gallagher. And Michael McManus. And there was that incident with the fake news reports and the actors. But hey, it’s not like the Bush administration was breaking the law. What’s that – they were? Oh.
Then, there are the illegal wiretaps.
You know these ones:
Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.
Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible “dirty numbers” linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said.
This is an odd and shady thing. Frankly, we have something called FISA. I’m not going to get too into it here, but I’ll lay out a couple of basic things.
1. It’s quite easy to get a warrant for a wiretap. In the history of FISA very few warrants have been denied.
2. If one does not get a warrant, FISA allows for retro-active warrants, for up to 3 days after the fact.
3. These warrants generally are kept secret.
Normally, this is the sort of thing for conspiracy theorists, yet it is happening here, in my America. What the f*ck?
Of course the White House Spin on this thing is 9/11. They are trying to prevent another 9/11. The problem with this is warrants are again EASY TO GET and that they aren’t doing much else to prevent another 9/11.
The 10-member panel, equally divided between Republicans and Democrats, prepared to release a report Monday assessing how well their recommendations have been followed. They say the government deserves “more F’s than A’s” in responding to their 41 suggested changes.
“People are not paying attention,” chairman Thomas Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, said Sunday. “God help us if we have another attack.”
The conclusion that is nigh inevitable is that these are wiretaps that would not be approved. So to whom might Big Brother be listening covertly? Reporters? Political enemies? The whole thing makes Watergate look on the up and up.
We’re talking about an administration that spies on protestors. No seriously.
[A]t a Quaker Meeting House in Lake Worth, Fla., a small group of activists met to plan a protest of military recruiting at local high schools. What they didn’t know was that their meeting had come to the attention of the U.S. military.
A secret 400-page Defense Department document obtained by NBC News lists the Lake Worth meeting as a “threat” and one of more than 1,500 “suspicious incidents” across the country over a recent 10-month period.
Crazy huh?
Well, It’s not like we would send them to any secret prisons. You know like the secret network of prisons that we have overseas? Sounds f*cking made up right? But the Washington Post broke the story back in November.
But hey
It’s just a little spying, lying, and warmongering. It isn’t like we are torturing people, routinely violating the Geneva Convention, ignoring the Constitution, treasonously outing CIA agents for political revenge, and appointing drinking buddies to positions of power…
Wait, shit no.
Well, it isn’t like the administration was ignoring warnings about the safety of people on the Gulf Coast until it is way too late.
No scratch that one.
At least the current position of not fully pursuing cases of dangerous mining conditions hasn’t… oh.
I’m capping myself off here to decrease my rage.
Expect an eventual part 2.
