Weinergate

Oh I haven't followed this scandal that closely. I thought only adults were involved but if he sent his pictures to minors, well then I understand why people are upset.
It's a little fuzzy and the mainstream media has been predictably mum about it. The best I've been able to put together from a few different sources (none of those being Michael Moore, so Thrasher, as always, is welcome to dodge the issue by screaming about the source) is that 2 minors are involved in the scandal, along with the 5 adults that have come forward so far. Given the ways of the interwebz, it's entirely possible Weiner honestly didn't know he was messing with kids (and, admittedly, everything is hearsay and will forever stay that way since it won't go to court), but you'd like to think he'd do a little checking before sending the Little Weiner.

Ultimately, like bn, it's the flimsy tinfoil lies he put together that get the indignation from me. Cop out with a "no comment" until you can get your story straight and hide all the cutlery from the missus. Then deal with the circus with as much dignity and contrition as you can fake.

Guy's got a hormonal pregnant wife at home. He's going to be lucky not to wake up with a fork in his eye. I expect he'll be punished adequately...
 
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Most reports are that minors were also on the receiving end of those pics. Nice to see so much support for that sort of thing.

"Most"? Are you referring to Rush and Faux News talking points? Quite the contrary, I've heard the opposite. That ALL were 18 years old or older.
 
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You guys thinks it's worse lying about one's sexual escapades than lying about the reasons to send our young men to war and getting innocent civilians killed?
 
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I think it's fairly understandable that a guy in his position develops such a sexual habit.

His surname is a synonym for penis. So, in his youth, he was probably often the victim of penis jokes. This might have lead his self-image to become dominated by his penis, to the point where he identifies so strongly with it that the very thought of a woman knowing this organ through pictures is enough to convince him that he was having an intimate sexual encounter, thus making this kind of sexual experience become a lot more satisfying for him than just normal masturbation.

He might have joked about "embracing it", but this case seems to show that on a subconscious level this "embrace" might have a lot more influence on him than he probably imagines.

I think there is a very general societal issue at stake here. The problem of how much an individual and its social standing is defined by its subconscious mind and the actions that are influenced by it. The question arises where society should draw the line between acceptable and in-acceptable behavior.

On another note, the topic of infidelity in thoughts and imagined acts is a major theme of the movie "Eyes Wide Shut" by Stanley Kubrick. It shows his incredible insight into the human psyche and the human society that this problem is now becoming very relevant in the age of the Internet.
 
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You guys thinks it's worse lying about one's sexual escapades than lying about the reasons to send our young men to war and getting innocent civilians killed?

Not the same thing, for two reasons:

1. Even though I will be the first person to admit that George Bush was a well connected buffoon who started a war with a sovereign nation based on what his "gut" told him, liberals aren't allowed to retcon history to make it seem like he knew all along that there were no WMD in the country. I would be willing to bet that the vast majority of those polled in September of 2002 would have said that Saddam Hussein did actually possess WMD. The liberal argument against the invasion at the time was that containment was working, and there was no reason to divert from our mission in Afghanistan. The CIA, the State Department, the UN; just about everyone agreed that Saddam Hussein had WMD and/or the capacity to make WMD. It was The Perfect Storm of Asshattery, but it was not a war based on lies.

2. As someone who has fought in a war, I can tell you that the purpose of going to war is not to "kill innocent civilians." However, I understand that war is a horrible, nasty, bloody, and destructive undertaking, and that unintended consequences are par for the course. It always interests me when civilians talk about the horrors of war, as if they know what they're talking about. During combat, everything moves at 100 miles an hour, you have no time to think, you can't hear anything but your own breath and heartbeat, and your visibility is limited to about 15 yards. Add to that the knowledge that you can be killed in exactly 1/100 of nothing, and there's about fuck-all that you can do about it. Now dress your enemy like the local population, scatter them in small clumps within densely populated urban centers, and give everyone an Ak-47. There is no FRAG-O ever drawn up that includes, "kill as many women and children as you can."

I think it sucks that our country is so voyeuristic, judgmental, and hypocritical that we're going to ride an otherwise decent politician out on a rail because he sent pictures of his junk to some people. But we don't live in France, or Sweden, or Italy, and we don't have that kind of culture, so instead of bemoaning the harsh reality of what our society is like, I'm more concerned about a man in office who is so narcissistic and short-sighted that he would engage in this kind of behavior, when - deep down - he knows that he's going to be caught at some point. What could have happened if he had been on a committee that received classified or eyes-only information, and he had been blackmailed for said information, instead of just being publicly humiliated and castigated? The days that he spent in damage control mode, spinning the situation and lying through his teeth, makes me not like him, personally. I wouldn't say that he can't do his job, but I'd think twice before adding his name to the list of candidates for a committee in charge of national security.
 
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You're being revisionist CB. Bush knew that there were no WMD, but didn't want to accept the info from the CIA.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/blumenthal/2007/09/06/bush_wmd

So yes, it is the same thing.

No, it is not; seeing what you want to see as truth, and knowing the truth, but willfully going against it are two different things. Bush had a lot of different intelligence coming to him, and he wanted to see - and gave more credit to - the intelligence that "proved" that Hussein had WMD. The intelligence that said otherwise, he dismissed, even though that intelligence, unbeknownst to him at the time was the truth. The CIA played along, and took a lot of heat for kowtowing to what the White House wanted, rather than presenting the facts. Information was distorted to fall in line with what the White House wanted to hear and portray, but at the time, everyone - and I mean everyone - thought Saddam had WMD. There was a very small minority - the correct minority, it turns out - that said he didn't.

The article in Salon - a publication of dubious objectivity - stated in the title "Bush Knew Saddam Had No Weapons of Mass Destruction." It's a bombastic and misleading title, especially considering that the last paragraph said:

"While one Iraqi source told the CIA that there were no WMD, information that was true but distorted to prove the opposite, another Iraqi source was a fabricator whose lies were eagerly embraced. "The real tragedy is that they had a good source that they misused," said one of the former CIA officers. 'The fact is there was nothing there, no threat. But Bush wanted to hear what he wanted to hear.'"

This article doesn't say anything that hadn't been discovered by congressional inquiries and investigations: Parts of the CIA weren't doing their job. Some, including the director, were more concerned with being daddy's favorite that doing good work. The intelligence community was bullied by the White House and I'm sure they were threatened with the specter of being dragged through the mud should another 9/11 occur, and so they gave the White House what it wanted. If what these two officers knew was The Truth, then why didn't it get leaked to the press if the White House didn't want to consider it? Because the intelligence they had was from a TCN, and while reliable, that kind of thing isn't Truth until history makes it so.

So, liberals tend to fall prey to confirmation bias and revisionism - because it's the truth now, they extrapolate it to mean that it's always been the truth so that it fits what they want to believe.
 
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@CB: If you want to sell it as an honest mistake, how do you explain that Powell later admitted that he lied to the Security Council in his presentation? If somebody has evidence he believes in, why does he need to produce fake one? And by the way the war was against international law regardless of the WMD issue since the Security Council had not agreed to it.
 
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And by the way the war was against international law regardless of the WMD issue since the Security Council had not agreed to it.
And by the way, this is patently false. You could get away with the council not specifically endorsing pulling the trigger (although that could also be argued as it's not a black/white thing), but to say that the authorization was not there is simply false. Read the UN records and weep.
 
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And by the way, this is patently false. You could get away with the council not specifically endorsing pulling the trigger (although that could also be argued as it's not a black/white thing), but to say that the authorization was not there is simply false. Read the UN records and weep.
There was an explicit vote about this and it was negative. After that the US interpreted EARLIER votes, which had announced the possibility of force, as giving them a mandate. This is lame given that the explicit vote was negative.

By the way the biggest lie about this war was, that it was sold to the public as a kind of response to 9/11 (or a measure to prevent something similar in future) . And this was clearly untrue since Iraq had no connections to 9/11 and today there is more Al-Qa'ida influence in Iraq than before the war.

But we got quite off topic here so feel free to continue your Whinergate stuff... :biggrin:
 
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There was an explicit vote about this and it was negative. After that the US interpreted EARLIER votes, which had announced the possibility of force, as giving them a mandate. This is lame given that the explicit vote was negative.
Strange that the US would vote against its own interests. Perhaps your "explicit vote" didn't actually pass like you're advertising?
 
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Strange that the US would vote against its own interests. Perhaps your "explicit vote" didn't actually pass like you're advertising?
I didn't mean to say that the US voted against the war, but that there was no majority from other nations for such resolution in the security council. Looking at Wikipedia it was withdrawn, when the US and others noticed they would get no majority.

From Wikipedia (I don't use Wikipedia as a proof here, only as a reference, you can surely find the primary sources from there):

"In 2003, the governments of the US, Britain, and Spain proposed another resolution on Iraq, which they called the "eighteenth resolution" and others called the "second resolution." This proposed resolution was subsequently withdrawn when it became clear that several permanent members of the Council would cast no votes on any new resolution, thereby vetoing it. [1] Had that occurred, it would have become even more difficult for those wishing to invade Iraq to argue that the Council had authorized the subsequent invasion. Regardless of the threatened or likely vetoes, it seems that the coalition at no time was assured any more than four affirmative votes in the Council—the US, Britain, Spain, and Bulgaria—well short of the requirement for nine affirmative votes.[2]

On September 16, 2004 Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, speaking on the invasion, said, "I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN Charter. From our point of view, from the charter point of view, it was illegal."[1]
 
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@CB: If you want to sell it as an honest mistake, how do you explain that Powell later admitted that he lied to the Security Council in his presentation? If somebody has evidence he believes in, why does he need to produce fake one? And by the way the war was against international law regardless of the WMD issue since the Security Council had not agreed to it.

I would first ask you to provide proof that Colin Powell said something to the effect of, "I knowingly, and willingly, lied to the United Nations on February 5th 2003." I googled the phrase, "Colin Powell Admits Lie" and came up with nothing significant, so I can only assume that Colin Powell never actually said the words, "I lied." I did find a statement that he made in 2005, where he called his speech at the UN a blot on his record. Curveball, the Iraqi source who provided the intel that the White House used, admitted that his information was all lies, but as it was filtered, aggregated, and sent up the chain of command, Powell had no way of knowing it was false.
 
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There was an explicit vote about this and it was negative.

I didn't mean to say that the US voted against the war, but that there was no majority from other nations for such resolution in the security council.
Hmmm, perhaps you can see my confusion. We've gone from an explicit vote that supports your position, to a vote that didn't happen and supports nothing. Not to pick on you, but this sort of imaginary justification and backpedalling is rather typical of the "illegal war" folks.
 
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Regarding Powell, I recently read an article where he says that with what he knew at the time, his decision was correct to support the war, but that with hindsight, he considers it a mistake.

Regarding illegality, I believe that officially, no war is allowed if not authorized by the UN, which makes basically 99.99% of the wars and conflicts in the world illegal. War on Iraq, was illegal since the UN did not authorize it. But in the end, I don't care about legal or illegal, just moral or not. And since I cannot think of any really good reasons for the US to have gone to war (with hindsight of course), I think the war was wrong and that the US and it allies would have been better off not going there.
 
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@dteowner: Fact is that they didn't get a security council decision for the war and that is what counts. To withdraw the motion when you see you will loose is not so different from actually loosing it and doesn't change the result that the war was illegal, as stated by Kofi Annan.

Still my biggest issue is that they sold the war to the American public as a response to 9/11, which it wasn't.
 
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Regarding Powell, I recently read an article where he says that with what he knew at the time, his decision was correct to support the war, but that with hindsight, he considers it a mistake.

Regarding illegality, I believe that officially, no war is allowed if not authorized by the UN, which makes basically 99.99% of the wars and conflicts in the world illegal. War on Iraq, was illegal since the UN did not authorize it. But in the end, I don't care about legal or illegal, just moral or not. And since I cannot think of any really good reasons for the US to have gone to war (with hindsight of course), I think the war was wrong and that the US and it allies would have been better off not going there.

I like the idea of the UN, but I think that the name is oxymoronic at this point. There is so much division, deceit, and politicking within that body, that to say that they have a higher moral standing than any other government is somewhat naive. If the UN is going to hold the authority to legitimize a military action, then they should have their own standing army, which they would utilize as a deterrent to wars that they consider illegitimate. A bigger, better trained, and better equipped army is the only thing that's going to prevent a nation from going to war, because the level of jingoism and nationalism at that point is too high for any degree of objectivity to be effective, and UN resolutions are nothing more than paper tigers.
 
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@dteowner: Fact is that they didn't get a security council decision for the war and that is what counts. To withdraw the motion when you see you will loose is not so different from actually loosing it and doesn't change the result that the war was illegal, as stated by Kofi Annan.

Still my biggest issue is that they sold the war to the American public as a response to 9/11, which it wasn't.
Fortunately for us, Kofi's impotent words have no more standing than yours and mine (and really, given all the scandals surrounding Kofi, do you really want to use him as your standard bearer?). The spoken opinion of the Secretary General really doesn't count for much given the written and enacted SC resolutions specifically authorizing use of force to counter non-compliance.
 
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Fortunately for us, Kofi's impotent words have no more standing than yours and mine (and really, given all the scandals surrounding Kofi, do you really want to use him as your standard bearer?). The spoken opinion of the Secretary General really doesn't count for much given the written and enacted SC resolutions specifically authorizing use of force to counter non-compliance.
The older resolutions in fact threaten with force in case of non-compliance. I know that the US tried to interpret this a s a mandate. But the text of the resolutions don't give a single member nation the mandate to decide on this. A new resolution would have been needed in order to actually use the force. Or can you give a link to a text showing that the US were given a mandate by any of the resolutions? Again: They tried to get a decision but didn't get it.
 
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I suppose it depends on your requirements. If you want a series of resolutions that say failure to comply would result in military consequences, there's 2 major ones and (IIRC) 5 minor ones. Given that Saddam clearly and undeniably failed to comply when he threw the weapons inspectors out of his country (and again when he limited their access once he let them back in under threat of military consequences), you've got a clear completion of the if-then as spelled out in writing. If you'll only accept an additional resolution that goes beyond the enacted if-then and says, "Go forth and unleash the unholy wrath of the UN. Yar!" as authorization, then I agree that no such resolution exists.

Since burden of proof would fall on the accuser (innocent until proven guilty…unless it's something you don't like, eh?), I think you're going to fall woefully short of being able to prove that the war was illegal.

Edit- To topic, Weiner is checking into rehab, but won't resign. In less reliable reports, tinfoilers say this is laying groundwork to use an ADA defence (sex addiction disability, or some such) to fight his ouster.
 
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