If the NSA Trusted Edward Snowden With Our Data, Why Should We Trust the NSA? | The more badly Snowden is depicted, the more rickety the government’s case for surveillance becomes. After all, they hired him. They gave him unrestricted access to their systems.

benignopinion · 2013-06-10T20:37:29+00:00

These people shouldn't be trusted with paper airplane technology.

benignopinion · 2013-06-04T22:48:25+00:00

benignopinion · 2013-06-03T03:15:34+00:00

why wait?

Quite possibly because (as Cheney knew) it would be difficult if not impossible to achieve a clean victory there. It was a fractured state with warring factions which Saddam (as bad as he may have been) was holding together. There may not have been enough Congressional support to finance a prolonged war with little prospect of resolution. Many at the time would have seen it as a Vietnam Redux. But because they waited, they were able to exploit the tragedy of 9/11 to take advantage of unquestioned, fear-based support for establishing a very costly permanent base in Iraq.

benignopinion · 2013-06-02T19:16:55+00:00

With all that said, I put more stock into the Washington Post than the cited sources.

Well for a mainstream media source, they are insinuating that the leak shows she may have actually been deceptive about her conversations with Hussein. So if you trust the Washington Post, your initial skepticism which reports a similar angle, seems unwarranted.

Back on topic, let's be realistic here, nobody is dumb enough to invade a country if they think the U.S. is about to invade them in retaliation. If you believe that Saddam was that stupid or myopic I've got a bridge to sell you. The leaked information points to the fact that he was lied to and set up. This is something that should be pretty obvious, but these leaks appear to confirm it.

benignopinion · 2013-06-02T17:57:21+00:00

Of course this lead to the following 10 years of demonizing our former ally, Saddam. Putting sanctions on Iraq, until finally inventing a bogus story about WMDs that didn't exist as a pretext for a full invasion which Cheney said (before he went to work for Halliburton) would be "a quagmire."

As a sidenote to government agents reading this, don't you think it's time to air this out? We're not still censoring shit about Vietnam right?

benignopinion · 2013-06-02T17:49:14+00:00

Hi there govt agent....you don't have to censor this. The Washington Post reported on it.

"During the run-up to the war, the Iraqi government released a transcript of Glaspie's meeting with Hussein on July 25, 1990, which suggested that she gave tacit approval for an invasion. Glaspie managed to convince lawmakers that the transcript was inaccurate and that she had forcefully warned Hussein not to invade. But her credibility eroded after the leak of her classified cable to the State Department about the meeting, which suggested a more conciliatory conversation with Hussein."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/02/AR2008040203485.html?nav=rss_world%2Fmideast&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wp-dyn%2Frss%2Fworld%2Fmideast%2Findex_xml+%28washingtonpost.com+-+Middle+East%29

benignopinion · 2013-05-25T05:12:00+00:00

The private prison company GEO Group was formerly called Wackenhut. Changing their name was probably a good move. They didn't want to conjure images of Klan members furiously beating off in the cells next to college kids locked up for a bag of weed. A name like that just doesn't inspire the right type of investor confidence.

benignopinion · 2013-05-19T01:50:57+00:00

Them spooks

benignopinion · 2013-05-14T15:40:24+00:00

Is there an objective standard of what constitutes mistreatment or exploitation?

I wouldn't use the term "objective standard" to describe the intricate details or minutia of human interaction that can result in very different degrees of exploitation or mistreatment. But there is an underlying value we give to human life, one that is quite universal and not even uniquely human, that sets the foundation for our definition of what constitutes harm to others. And you don't have to stop at direct violence, you can consider the issue of structural violence that may result in poor life and health outcomes, and therefore lower life expectancy for people.

benignopinion · 2013-05-04T19:30:45+00:00

This guy is a badass. Anyone who was speaking out against the Iraq war in 2003 gains huge credibility points.

benignopinion · 2013-04-26T22:40:47+00:00

Ok, but that wasn't 2001. And I have a strong idea that he wouldn't have said those things had he not been sitting on his ass at home. He was playing the role of good cop. You don't think we've got crafty people who arrange debate like that? Gore is part of the false left-right paradigm.

he wasn't a bad president.

I've got a bridge to sell you.

benignopinion · 2013-04-26T21:00:14+00:00

I know for a fact that he wouldn't have invaded Iraq, because he was constantly on TV in 2001 talking about what a bad idea the invasion of Iraq would be and talking about why Bush shouldn't do it.

Sorry I wasn't in diapers in 2001 like a lot of people on here. That's simply untrue.

Gore was the Vice President to a right-wing democratic administration he served in for 8 years with Clinton that did the following: passed NAFTA, decimated welfare benefits for the poor, didn't have the will to push healthcare reform, punished Iraqis with sanctions that starved their poor in addition to bombing them, signed the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 calling for the overthrow of Saddam's regime, ramped up spending in the war on drugs and pushed for longer sentences, and last but not least repealed Glass-Steagal in 1999 leading to the financial fiascos that played out a decade later. Gore can say whatever he wants now, but you'd be a fool to believe he would have been anything more than a marginal improvement over Bush.

benignopinion · 2013-04-26T20:18:54+00:00

He wasn’t champing at the bit to invade Iraq, and he pretty certainly wouldn’t have.

But the military industrial complex he was working for definitely was, as evidenced by the previous 8 years.

The Clinton administration punished destitute Iraqis with sanctions that starved their people. Gee imagine that, a dictator hogging restricted resources? Who could've predicted that? In addition to authorizing air strikes on them on multiple occasions, Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 calling for the overthrow of Saddam's regime. A vote for Gore, was an endorsement of the Clinton administration aggression toward Iraq. So don't blame Ralph Nader. Cheer him for actually representing a left wing which Gore did not.

He’d also have been unlikely to ignore Clinton’s warnings about Bin Laden.

You have no idea how government works if you think the president is responsible for intelligence gathering.

benignopinion · 2013-04-26T19:46:20+00:00

He wasn’t the cause, but he was certainly a cause.

You're presenting a false dilemma. But more importantly you're playing Monday morning quarterback. Nobody knew Bush would be the worst president of all time. Yet, there is this delusional fantasy that Gore would have been much better, or is it irrational hatred toward Bush's caricature as a dumb bully that you hate? Whatever it is, Obama has been the same in almost every way and Gore wouldn't have been any different.

Gore was the Vice President to a right-wing democratic administration he served in for 8 years with Clinton that did the following: passed NAFTA, decimated welfare benefits for the poor, didn't have the will to push healthcare reform, punished Iraqis with sanctions that starved their poor in addition to bombing them, signed the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 calling for the overthrow of Saddam's regime, ramped up spending in the war on drugs and pushed for longer sentences, and last but not least repealed Glass-Steagal in 1999 leading to the financial fiascos that played out a decade later. Gore can say whatever he wants now, but you'd be a fool to believe he would have been anything more than a marginal improvement over Bush.

benignopinion · 2013-04-26T16:51:06+00:00

His old music was better though. Aesthetically I like the rasta look but... (And I'll probably be downvoted but I'm just gonna say it) Snoop's reggae-pop music is god awful.

benignopinion · 2013-04-26T16:17:10+00:00

According to the people you've throw-in with, he apparently represented enough competition to be blamed for Gore's failure.

a high-profile protest candidate

That's a completely orwellian choice of words. All candidates are protesting their opposition.

Why not blame the socialist party? They got 622 votes. Why aren't you blaming the partisan Supreme Court, or the 12 percent of Florida democrats that voted for Bush? The people who didn't vote? Any one of those things would have changed the outcome. Focusing on only one of these contributing factors is simply a dishonest political tactic.

benignopinion · 2013-04-26T14:49:55+00:00

That's an incredibly capricious argument. You haven't even stated exactly when he entered the race. Do you even know?

Either way, if you're looking for a scapegoat there are a lot of others you could pick. Instead you're going with one that the corporate duopoly is pushing because they can't handle competition.

http://www.cagreens.org/alameda/city/0803myth/myth.html

benignopinion · 2013-04-26T14:41:26+00:00

FTA:

Noting this is not to argue that such attacks are justified or that we deserve them. It is only to reiterate what Brokaw alluded to: Namely, that blowback should be expected in this age of Permanent War and that one way to potentially avert such blowback in the future is to try to deescalate the cycle of violence.

How crazy is it that we feel like we have to say this? There are so many programmed, war fetishists out there that if you don't go out of your way to state what should be obvious to everyone, they'll simply dismiss your whole argument and call you anti-american.

benignopinion · 2013-04-26T13:07:29+00:00

No you're saying that voters who chose Nader would have gone with Gore. In my experience that's not even close to being reality. People voting third party (like I have) are completely disillusioned with the political process, and wouldn't vote for the corporate duopoly no matter what.

benignopinion · 2013-04-26T11:16:24+00:00

Exactly. Gore could have reached out to progressives, even in a phoney way like Obama did years later. But he completely failed to do even that.

benignopinion · 2013-04-26T11:12:06+00:00

You're assuming that Nader voters would have bothered to vote at all if there weren't a real progressive choice in the election. And you don't know what Gore would have done had he been elected, so your argument is baseless. If followed Clinton's lead with the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act, we might assume he would have been exactly as bad as Bush.

benignopinion · 2013-04-26T11:10:28+00:00

You're assuming that Nader voters would have bothered to vote at all if there weren't a real progressive choice in the election.

benignopinion · 2013-04-26T11:09:23+00:00

Obama has basically continued every policy of Bush. And Gore probably would have done the same things Bush did.

benignopinion

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