Agreed.
But once out of office, people are rarely prosecuted, like Bush lying about Iraqi WMD.
Obituary: ... there they go !
- Thread starter sear
- Start date
Agreed.
But once out of office, people are rarely prosecuted, like Bush lying about Iraqi WMD.
People are too critical or expect too much.
Like Roseann Barr getting cut out over her "planet of the apes" comment.
Shiftless2
Well-known member
Was he lying or did he simply receive bad intelligence re WMD's?
Lying, unquestionably.
- piffle -
The Bushies railroaded us. "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt" was President GWB's way of insinuating that not only did the U.S. evidence leave "no doubt".
But that this ostensible evidence has been corroborated by ostensibly objective allies.
Bush Lied ! Thousands Died !
For what?
Shiftless2
Well-known member
That doesn't really address the question - what did his intelligence sources tell him? That was the point of my commen.t.
a) President Bush lied.
b) What Bush lied about: his and other intelligence sources tell him beyond doubt? "the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." &
c) "Time is not on our side. I will not wait on events while dangers gather. I will not stand by as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons." U.S. President Bush (the younger) in his State of the Union speech Jan. 29, 2002
It was outright wholesale fraud.
There were no real "intelligence sources".
It was all deliberate lies.
Like they took an invoice for the Yellowcake uranium Saddam had purchased in 1979 for the Osiraq reactor, and crudely over wrote the date to look like 1989.
And the 1979 yellowcake was still there untouched when we invaded, so we sold it to Canada.
The anthrax mobile weapons labs were actually hydrogen generators for balloons used for getting upper wind readings for artillery.
Could you imagine trying to make bio weapons in something that was not even enclosed?
And there was no sarin or VX at all, and the most Saddam ever had was mustard gas he got from the US.
Not only were all the claims obviously fake, but all of Europe and the UN inspectors all told us we were wrong.
Shiftless2
Well-known member
For the Deadheads among us ....
https://www.google.com/search?q=Bob...2ahUKEwi34bvbr4SSAxWAj4kEHWTCPegQjcEJegQIKBAD
Bob Weir, Grateful Dead guitarist and songwriter, dies at 78
www.bbc.com
https://www.google.com/search?q=Bob...2ahUKEwi34bvbr4SSAxWAj4kEHWTCPegQjcEJegQIKBAD
Bob Weir, Grateful Dead guitarist and songwriter, dies at 78
Bob Weir, Grateful Dead co-founder, dies aged 78
Weir was a fixture in the psychedelic rock group and its various spin-offs over 60 years.
www.bbc.com
Shiftless2
Well-known member
Shiftless2
Well-known member
Scott Adams, Dilbert creator and conservative commentator, dies aged 68
Scott Adams, Dilbert creator and conservative commentator, dies aged 68
Cartoonist – who was dropped from US papers in 2023 after calling Black people a ‘hate group’ – had prostate cancer
www.theguardian.com
Shiftless2
Well-known member
Claudette Colvin, US civil rights pioneer arrested for not giving up bus seat, dies aged 86
Colvin refused to give up seat to white woman in Alabama in 1955, nine months before Rosa Parks’ act of defiance
www.theguardian.com
an uncorroborated anecdote:
At a State dinner Richard Nixon was seated next to China's Chairman Mao.
Nixon asked: What do you think of Western civilization?
Mao replied: Worth a try.
When do you suppose we'll get started?
Mao was correct.
Normal human society is similar to Meerkats, where the tribe all shares and defends each other out of instincts of empathy and sympathy.
Due to Mideast desertification, people were forced to increase population density along river banks, and human nature was over ridden by greed and "might makes right".
The Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks, and Romans than spread this evil development through out Europe, where the Spanish, French, and British then spread it over the entire globe.
Greed is not natural to humans, and it is a shame we have established school systems to indoctrinate each new generation into such anti-social customs.
But getting back to Mao and Nixon, they did create a shift away from the previous Cold War attitude and is why China now is such an commercial power.
Here is an article their first meeting.
Last edited:
Perhaps.
Some anthropologist suggest a major step humans took diverging from nomadic hunter / gatherers was the invention of the agricultural plow.
Before that, apart from vying for access to scarce resources, potable water for example, they're likely to have taken the live-&-let-live approach to peripheral encounters with strangers.
The planetary population density was low enough, and inbreeding a problem serious enough, that creating mortal enemies between clans at that stage of human development risked catastrophe.
The theory is, the agricultural plow created for the first time, food surplus, and permanent settlements, which in turn provided need & opportunity for developing crafts, leather-working, simple architecture, food storage technology, etc.
BUT !
Once there was surplus, there was incentive for the slothful to wait until after the harvest, and then raid the settlement for plunder, the spark that has lead to military.
Pretty much agree, but then also along with the agricultural surplus came conflicts over land ownership, plantation slavery, currency, and mercenaries.
All of which are negatives.
Humans really did not normally need an agricultural surplus.
The only thing I would disagree is a connection between agriculture and permanent settlements.
I think almost all primitive hunter/gatherers were sedentary because the ones now and long ago, in places like Brazil, Borneo, Hawaii, the Kalahari Desert, etc. were and are sedentary.
Being nomadic is a lot more work, and the only ones who do that are those dependent upon nomadic prey, which is not very often.
Eventually. Probably not with the first square foot to be plowed.
Slash & burn figures in here somewhere, probably mostly before the plow I imagine.
Food insecurity has been a way of life for most of human history, and basically all animal history.
Food security, surplus freed clan leaders for other pursuits, a boon to innovation.
We understand, they didn't leap from gnawing on the remains the wolves left behind, to planting a thousand acres of soy.
Today in the new millennium we can deplete our soil, & recover w/ fertilizer, etc.
The Nile floods, so depleted soils there were naturally replenished.
An agricultural field may be many things, but portable it is not.
They didn't have GPS tractors, so toil in the fields would have been a prominent feature in their daily routine.
The History Channel ran a TV series titled Alone, about survivalists competing to see who could survive in the forest the longest.
One of the many things I learned from this series:
despite the fact each competitor / participant had with him about as much modern gear as he could carry, they rarely got a day off.
They were either attending to their shelter, gathering wood for fuel, hauling water, or otherwise on an almost perpetual hunt for food.
When such primitive living was an individual's only option life was difficult, dangerous, and short.
It's easier to stay than to go.
You know that.
I know that.
They knew that.
So we can deduce, nomads traveled for a reason.
Such reasons may include soil depletion. When the area they occupied simply couldn't feed their population, they'd move on. No huge sacrifice. They didn't live in mansions. They lived in huts.