CauTi0N wrote:

Yet, you assume ethics do not play a factor. There's your first mistake.

Your first mistake is missing the point of WHY I'm ignoring them. Neither you or Lummox have even attempted to understand my argument which is exactly why you keep typing nonsense.

I said he's not a terrorist.

Ok. Once again, read the article, make some sort of attempt to have common sense to understand why we actually went over there in the first place, then read the definition of "terrorism" and tell me he isn't a terrorist.

Your argument is as closed-minded as saying one who maintains a faith is idiotic - but I can name offhand several incredibly intelligent people who maintain a faith.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.

It's interesting, because your first inclination here (and I'm interested in how you squeeze out of this argument) is that anyone that disagrees with you is automatically wrong.

Of course I'm saying you guys are wrong - why would anyone argue unless they believed they were right? Which is the EXACT same thing you're doing. I need to go back to school, I'm a moron, whatever other names you've called me in the comments because you disagree on Bush being a terrorist. Besides, I've asked you to tell me why he isn't one. I gave my example and my definition - its your turn. Quit resorting to name calling and insults and prove your point.

And not only that, but you are saying that they are wrong, but also being brainwashed by propaganda.

Yes - if you believe the BS that came out of Bush's mouth, you've been brainwashed. If you honestly believe we went to Iraq for "WoMD", you have some serious waking up to do.

Your argument is weak - it's like saying my agreement that 1+1=2 is because I'm brainwashed if YOU chose to believe 1+1=3, simply because you think differently.

No, it's not. "Bush is a terrorist" can be proven - it's not an opinion. The same way 1+1 can be proven to equal 2. "Bush is the worst president ever" is an example of an opinion.

No, you are still a child. It's pretty obvious based on every comment you've made.

My age has nothing to do with anything. Geniuses and fools come in all ages. Furthermore, you completely ignored my challenge and just decided to insult me - congratulations, you're really looking smart right about now.

However, your argument is that these people who disagree with you are automatically wrong, because they are weak-minded.

And you think I'm automatically wrong because "I'm a kid" or because "I need to go back to school". How are you any different here? Besides, my argument was not that. My initial point was that the actions of Bush make him comparable to Osama. After you and Lummox started typing up crap that didn't even make sense, that's when I started calling you weak-minded because you sounded as if this country is ran by innocent little angels.

I don't care if you disagree - it's that you are so clouded in your arrogance that you don't even recognize that fairly intelligent people have the ability to agree with a societal aspect.

You're more arrogant than I am - I guarantee it. Your constant resort to insults in order to dodge my challenges shows how condescending you are.

And if you begin to deny this, then you fall into your own trap, because you'd be a hypocrite.

And I don't even know where you're going with this now. We went from Bush being a terrorist to falling into traps.

There's the fallacy in your logic. I'd recommend taking basic mathematics, or introduction to logic to learn how to think.

I'd recommend auditioning to be on Comedy Central - you seem to be great with the personal insults and you'd be better at roasting people than actually engaging with them in a debate.

No. You are twisting definitions. And, if you are ignoring labels, then how can you use terrorist in an argument?

Because "terrorism" isn't a label used to describe Bush's actions. That's why no one calls it that - except for people who actually realize how evil this man is.

Again, assumptions. I'd say before you begin making large leaps of faith on who a person is, you actually try to figure them out first. I've already explained how this is wrong, no need to waste more space.

Lol, large leaps of faith on who a person is. You've made the same amount if not more assumptions on me than I have about you.

Right. OBVIOUSLY he has no conscience. Did I ever say his actions were fine? Nope. Were they efficient? Nope. But is he a mass murderer?

Well tell me what you're arguing instead of presenting some unclear half-assed argument where you aren't stating all of your beliefs - I can't debate with you while you're busy telling me to take logic classes and leaving out important points regarding your stance in this discussion.

You sound like a conspiracy theorist.

Nothing about this is really conspiracy. "Bush came up with BS reasons to invade Iraq and had the military start an unnecessary war killing off thousands of innocent people" actually happened - it's not something we have to guess about or wonder if it really occurred. It wasn't even secret - Bush on live television stated the reasons for invading and America bought it - thankfully not everyone was stupid enough to really think WoMD ever even existed.

I'm not saying you are wrong, I'm saying you are not looking at it from both sides - you are closed-minded.

You know Caution, you can help me see it from both sides if you present your side instead of calling me names over and over.

He's not a good person, but he's not Osama. And that's just what you do not get.

Why do you feel that way? Also, how can this really be proven? Basically you're saying one is more evil than the other - my point is that they're both evil and that's all I'm concerned about.

Right. Because you know everything, right?

You don't need to know everything to come to the conclusion that I have. You just have to think and realize how the world operates. It revolves around greed and wealth - and the greedy pursuit of wealth is always sinister.

So, because you know everything, and everything about me,

Well you've shown that you know loads about me - why shouldn't I be able to pretend I know everything about you?

you should also know that I've been taking a philosophical course, and have written fairly well-documented essays explaining why I think how I do, and why it's a very strong argument.

I've done essays too - took AP English last year.

Your question of people assuming corruption doesn't exist is also weak

Not really. I've been on debating forums for about four years now and the majority of people respond with tin-foil hat jokes and other nonsense. People are afraid to know their government is evil. Ignorance is bliss - they'd rather you not talk like that and just believe that everything is fine and dandy.

I'd look up the problem of evil, and you'd see quite a few people deal with this issue.

Agreed, but most don't.

You assume people don't think, and because you are a 16 year old in high school with access to Wikipedia and 40 hours a week to sit around and think about how to troll this week, you must be correct. Focus on school, don't become an idiot - because currently, you're being a huge moron.

Lol. More personal attacks. You're quite entertaining, but I think I should give you a hint: you have to come up with more than insults to win here! Especially when those insults are terrible assumptions - something you attacked me for making which means you're a hypocrite!

Bootyboy wrote:

EmpirezTeam wrote:
Of course I'm saying you guys are wrong - why would anyone argue unless they believed they were right? Which is the EXACT same thing you're doing. I need to go back to school, I'm a moron, whatever other names you've called me in the comments because you disagree on Bush being a terrorist. Besides, I've asked you to tell me why he isn't one. I gave my example and my definition - its your turn. Quit resorting to name calling and insults and prove your point.

ET, if your assertion is still "Bush is a terrorist," the burden of proof is still on you.

My proof was comment #42 - instead of arguing that, I'm just called a moron and a troll. It's their way of backing out of an argument they can't win.

No, ET, what I did was the same thing you did. Your insults resorted in assumptions of a weak mind, with little evidence. Mine came from actual evidence of everything you are saying here. I'm not going to take everything you say out of context like you are doing with me, so I'm going to just note a few points and give you what I'm apparently lacking, and in a calm fashion. If I can grow up, you should be able to as well.

a) Ethics cannot be ignored. It's as if you were making a meal but not accounting for how many people you need to serve. It's an important field in what Bush did.

b) The campaign Bush set out was obviously very... dark, I'd say. Not even under any conspiracy theory, it's pretty obvious there was more going on, especially with Hussein not holding any weapons of mass destruction. Now, please actually read what I'm about to say here, because it will be easy to take what I say here and change it to fit your personal agenda. If you do so, I'm simply going to disregard your comment because you won't have followed instructions.

On one hand, many claim Bush to be an idiot. He couldn't have been too stupid to become President, but he didn't seem particularly... much of a genius, I'd suppose. However, I'd say this is unlikely. I'd say Bush is probably very intelligent, and I have good reason to believe so - his actions committed were very clever and ambiguous, and tricked several people.

So, let's say Bush is an intelligent man, and he caused an illegal war, and he did all this bad stuff that makes him a terrorist, like you claim. You have to consider the overall goal, and that's why ethics must come into play. You sound very much like the ends do not justify the means, and that's where you and I differ.

I'd say, if Bush had better overall intentions for America (and the relationship between several of the events occurring around the world at the time) were for the greater good (let this be, for now), then Bush took the means he thought necessary to execute this.

You're likely to ask what "greater good," but you have to consider the surroundings of what was accomplished, even though it may not seem like much.
i) Saddam Hussein's capturing - though he had no WoMD, he still was a pretty terrible person. His arrest, and later execution was rather a good thing for the whole world.
ii) The attempt to reform Iraq. I don't agree with how he followed up with this (especially looking at the medical services the US funds), but democracy gives a lot that other people can only dream of having. I'd suspect this is a large reason why he was supported for so long (not personally, but he did keep office for 2 years).
iii) Many of the soldiers I have talked to have claimed to honestly believe what they are doing is right. Why? Because even though they have had to kill people, they have seen more happiness brought in the people that they were able to outreach to and protect.
iv) Lastly, consider Osama's capture. That's much more attributed to Bush than Obama (or should be), because it was founded under a system Bush employed, and Obama wanted to destroy. Is the method unjust - I'd say so. But really, what are the chances we would have found Osama within this next decade? It's likely fairly slim had Bush's system not been implemented. And was Osama's capture a good thing? Yes.

c) So why are Bush and Osama different? Osama didn't want America to support Israel, and he was power-hungry. However, let's focus on this Israel situation. From the research I've done, he's been under the influence that it is absolutely unacceptable to put a Jewish support over an Arabian one. He also saw civilians and military as the same, and so therefore anyone was good to go.

Bush, however, retaliated likely for economic reasons, though in this one I could be very wrong. It's unlikely America was looking to "conquer" Iraq but rather reform it, but some of the higher motives I'd guess was oil. Now, this isn't necessarily a great thing, but considering the US military (from people I've talked to) go to as many lengths that they can to not harm civilians.

Osama was a terrorist because he wanted immediate death of every American, because we are a) the most powerful, and b) terrible people. Bush was not a terrorist because his motives weren't in the right mindset for terrorism.

However, that's where the ethics come in. Honestly, I do think the ends justify the means. I think they could have been handled better, which is why I disagree with Bush, but he got done what should have been finished.

I'll admit there is more I can look up on. If I left anything out, feel free to add it in, because I'm sure I missed something. However, I'm fairly confident in saying Bush was just a terrible leader - but not a terrorist.

Also, I question why, under your definitions of specific things, you haven't put Obama on trial yet? Considering Osama was killed immediately, and no trial given - he refrained from the Constitution as well.

One last thought. You mentioned they are both evil, and that's all you are concerned about. I'd agree they are both evil. I don't think they are both terrorists, but I'd say both have severely bad qualities attached to each other. However, your statement implies that everyone would therefore be a terrorist - hell, I'm evil. You're evil. Everyone around has committed a sin - but we aren't all terrorists. Osama's acts were far worse, and he was a much larger threat. It's a bit difficult to put them on a scale and say they'd even out.

EmpirezTeam wrote:

WoMD was a lie all along. Bush just needed excuses to come up with so he could do whatever he wanted to do which makes him a liar. And he didn't care about the lives that were taken in the process.

Although I've avoided arguing your politics directly and I've hitherto stuck only to the semantic side of the argument, I have to point out that this is a canard. (Also, no one puts an "o" in WMD. Seriously?) Even early in the invasion, allied soldiers were discovering small caches of biological and chemical weapons, but there were also larger caches of a more dubious nature, like warehouses stuffed with "pesticides" that were really chemical weapon precursors. (Technically the chemicals were also pesticides, but ones that are highly uncommon and no one would manufacture except to further refine them into nerve toxins.) More recently however, several larger entities including the New York Times (don't have a link; sorry) reported that in fact actual, indisputable WMDs were found after all. All indications now are that Saddam kept some of his stockpile, probably offloaded a bunch to Syria (speculation), and dismantled many of his weapons programs on a temporary basis with the intention of starting them up again when things cooled down. All evidence recovered from the dismantled operations showed that they were still in a state where they could be spun back up.

But heck, for the sake of argument pretend the above isn't true, and by pretend I mean ignore it and believe whatever you like because you were going to do that anyway. There are two other problems with your statement, quite aside from the fact that you're only speculating as to Bush's actual motives for attacking Iraq, or that you insist he didn't care about the consequences. (Not caring is highly unlikely--one can care and yet still choose an action as the lesser of two evils.) One of those problems is that there were numerous other reasons besides WMD to get rid of Hussein, including 1) severe and egregious human rights violations (his torture chambers are well documented), 2) massive environmental destruction (he obliterated the southern marshes just to screw over the Shiites who opposed him in the '90s), and 3) providing financial incentives to terrorism (specifically, paying suicide bombers' families $25K). WMD was merely the reason used to procure several security council declarations from the UN, which had been hounding Hussein for his weapons programs for years already. (Ascribe whatever value you like to the above reasons. Perhaps none of them were enough to justify going in; fair enough.)

The other problem is that to lie, Bush would have had to intentionally deceive. That is, you have to show he had good reason to believe Hussein had no such weapons. I think it's safe to say there were some conflicting stories. But British intelligence never repudiated (and AFAIK, still to this day stands by) the reports of Iraq trying to buy yellowcake from Niger, and though Wikipedia lists those documents as forgeries there is no conclusive evidence given either way. Even that aside, literally every intelligence agency in the world believed that Hussein's WMD programs, still known to be active in 1998 when he kicked the inspectors out, remained fully active, and it was known that he had large, unaccounted-for stockpiles that were still being sought in '98. In the gap between then and 2003, absolutely everybody thought the programs were ongoing. To date I'm not sure it's clear when they were actually put on hiatus, but it was well after '98, probably at least '02 or even early '03 when Hussein was feeling the pressure from the UN and wanted to be prepared for a possible return of the inspectors.

So on the one hand you have a long-established, widely circulated and believed official version of the story based on solid and trusted intelligence sources, and on the other hand you have a few indications of varying authenticity to the contrary--which in the field of intelligence, I have to think is hardly unusual. Hussein was known--confirmed--to have large stockpiles of WMD at one time, and never said what he did with them; he could have made his detractors at the UN look incredibly foolish by publicly destroying the lot of them, but that isn't what happened. Nobody misplaces several thousand tons of nerve gas; he simply didn't say, or would claim they no longer existed without providing the least bit of proof to that effect. And make no mistake, the burden of proof was on Iraq. So in the face of that, a solidly built consensus vs. a few not-that-unusual what-ifs won the day. Bush had every reason to believe WMD were still present, even if they weren't. At worst, therefore, you can say he was mistaken, not lying.

Also, if Bush had good reason to believe the WMD stockpiles were destroyed, then how do you think he got the UNSC to go along with forcing further inspections when the other members would have had similar intel? In the end, the attack proceeded only after Hussein violated not one, but two new UNSC resolutions regarding the weapons inspections, and that was on top of his ongoing violations of several others including the terms of the cease fire from Gulf War I.

"Bush lied, people died" is a bumper sticker, not a serious analysis. But I suppose "I feel that Bush was morally in the wrong and he was at worst somewhat mistaken, and people died" doesn't have the same zing. It's still perfectly reasonable to believe the WMD thing was overwrought, a matter of opinion I do not intend to debate with you, but it was neither fabrication nor even all that incorrect.

Aw heck, let's go for the twofer.

Besides, who knows, Osama could have done some good things in his lifetime to before al Qaeda. Besides, al Qaeda supported Taliban - a group U.S. gave millions of dollars to. So either they gave money to ruthless bastards or people who were at some point doing the right thing.

The US never explicitly supported the Taliban. They supported people who were, at the time, just locally fighting the USSR's annexation of Afghanistan. Some of those people later went on to become our enemies, because their interests didn't align with ours. At that time it was a cold war issue and right or wrong, we viewed the Soviets as the bigger threat. Later on when the Taliban emerged as a dominant power in the region, they were much-reviled for their extremism and their disdain for human rights, and the US was no friend to them.

It's perfectly possible to oppose Bush's policies, the Iraq war, and any number of other things without letting yourself get suckered into repeating such ridiculous assertions. You're trying to prop up your points with myths that have been thoroughly debunked.

Gakumerasara wrote:

Now that Osama's dead, we can dismantle the TSA! Hooray! /wishful thinking

Gads, we shouldn't have mantled them in the first place. If we wanted security theater it would have been cheaper, less invasive, and probably even way more effective to just hire actors to pretend to use high-tech wands. If our political class didn't have their heads so far up their own butts, they would've just copied the Israeli security model.

Dude, you lost the semantics debate. I get that you're saying you don't merely disapprove of Bush, that you say he's a terrorist by definition. Problem is, as I said earlier, you either don't know what the definition is or you don't know what the word definition even means.

EmpirezTeam wrote:

I gave my example and my definition - its your turn.

Here's where you hit the skids. There isn't "your" definition or "our" definition; there's only the definition. Language is only possible where definitions are broadly shared. Hence there is an official, standard definition which is basically the same throughout any dictionary. Common definitions are the most important feature of language, because they enable people with two different thought processes to be able to convey and understand meaning in a relatively clear way--at least, as long as they choose to.

Language is malleable, but it is not infinitely so. It changes over time, but not instantly. To participate in a conversation with other people you have to get along with the same common definitions everyone else does. We're using them; you aren't. You choose not to, because as long as you have the safety of being able to make any word mean anything you want, or any fact be true as long as you wish it to be, any truth infinitely subjective no matter how fundamental it is, your positions are immune from scrutiny. No counterargument can be valid to you, because once it crosses the border into your domain it loses all meaning, and you can redefine it to be as absurd as you like.

This whole topic reminds me of a scene from the horrible Tim Allen movie "Big Trouble". Remember the audio bit where the UF fan calls into the radio station? yeah, something like that...

Lummox JR wrote:

That's a pretty watered down definition and doesn't count for crap. It's not the least bit descriptive; the word might as well not even exist if that was its definition. The use of violence in the pursuit of political aims is already called war, and the use of intimidation is one facet of diplomacy.

As a strategem, terrorism's single most dominant characteristic is the deliberate targeting of noncombatants.

I don't think Bush deliberately targeted civilians, but at the same time I think he couldn't care less which makes him just as bad. If he did, he wouldn't have wanted to make up ridiculous excuses to go over there in the first place.

Perhaps we're so used to calling everybody else a terrorist, when we employ a bit of our own terrorism, we don't recognize it.