Comments on: AAARRRGH!

By: fred

fred — Thu, 16 Oct 2003 03:23:36 +0000

Moptop is bang on. You lefties have a lot to offer but your current inability to control your tendency to lie like Joe Stalin is hurting you. Bush did not say or suggest or imply or hint there was an imminent threat. There are reasonable and just grounds to criticise Bush and the war. Pick one, but please stop making asses of yourselves.

By: Mike T

Mike T — Tue, 14 Oct 2003 16:26:44 +0000

Put words in the administration’s mouth, claim that they are what the administration “really meant”, even though you can find no actual words to support them, “imminent threat” comes to mind as the most famous example of this dishonest technique, then call them liars for saying what you say they said, pretending that their actual words do not matter. Replace “imminent threat” with “Al Gore invented the internet” and you’ve got a pretty good rundown of election 2000.

By: moptop

moptop — Tue, 14 Oct 2003 02:30:23 +0000

This is what passes as a fisking on the left? Mark Steyn doesn’t agree with your point of view, you point it out repeatedly, that discredits Steyn? Wilson has made it quite clear that he has the goal of discrediting the Bush administration. He did not become a Democrat only after the trip to Niger, and in fact Bush did refer to Africa, not Niger, and the Brits stand by their story. To elide over this fact is just one more symptom of the pathetic depths the left has sunk to. Put words in the administration’s mouth, claim that they are what the administration “really meant”, even though you can find no actual words to support them, “imminent threat” comes to mind as the most famous example of this dishonest technique, then call them liars for saying what you say they said, pretending that their actual words do not matter.

By: Tom Maguire

Tom Maguire — Sat, 11 Oct 2003 04:14:57 +0000

In your world, “midicnes” is spelled “medicines”.

By: Tom Maguire

Tom Maguire — Sat, 11 Oct 2003 04:13:50 +0000

Well, it may have been a bit snarkier than normal – I am grappling with various cold midicnes, and may have mixed myself a Rushbo special – but that was me.

By: Nick

Nick — Sat, 11 Oct 2003 02:27:59 +0000

Please tell me that that comment wasn’t posted by the real Tom Maguire.

By: Tom Maguire

Tom Maguire — Sat, 11 Oct 2003 01:51:31 +0000

From TIME, helpfully linked above,, which is generally unsympathetic to the Bush side on this story: The answer is that Plame is just the latest casualty in a low-grade war that has raged for more than a year between the CIA and the White House about the nature and use of intelligence. It has been a constant, under-the-radar struggle between the ideological hard-liners of the Bush team against career intelligence experts at the cia—a fight over the validity of the evidence that the U.S. and its allies gathered about Saddam and his nuclear ambitions. Hmm. So in addition to appearing to the world to be a well qualified former ambassador, Wilson had close ties to the see-no-evil CIA that had been at odds with the White House for over a year (well over a year, to hear the neocons tell it – they think the CIA has been wrong on Iraq for a decade). And the position here is that Wilson’s CIA connection is utterly irrelevant to the story, and says nothing at all about his motivation, or his commitment to finding evidence supporting the Cheney side of the story? Mr. Steyn does a bad job of compressing this point into the phrase “anti-war” but it takes very little imagination to know that he meant “anti-neocons”; the neocons had been openly targetting Iraq since 1998. And since Mr. Barlow has been following this story pretty closely, he is no doubt aware that the description of his report provided by Wilson to the NY Times was at odds with the (verbal) report he gave the CIA. What he told the CIA included hints and feelers from an Iraqi trade mission trying to purchase, so he guessed, uranium. Which is why the CIA felt his report was inconclusive. http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/news/2003/intell-030711-cia01.htm So let’s see – the Ambassador is hooked into the CIA side of the neocon-CIA tussle, and is publicly misrepresenting his report to the CIA. To say the White House acted in revenge confuses the words “revenge” and “rebut”.

By: dipnut

dipnut — Sat, 11 Oct 2003 01:10:29 +0000

...the idea that the media are...being tough on pore ole Frat and ‘oomphing up’ something is...ludicrous. ...the Plame story could just disappear... Check out next week's issue of Time. And Ted, check this out.

By: Ted Barlow

Ted Barlow — Fri, 10 Oct 2003 15:28:17 +0000

He's also the same Mark Steyn who wrote that reports of intense heat in Iraq were just anti-war propoganda. A few weeks later, between two and five soldiers were dead from the heat.

By: Ben

Ben — Fri, 10 Oct 2003 09:32:01 +0000

Is this the same Mark Steyn who argued that security in Iraq was not a problem and it was all some big hype? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/06/01/wsteyn01.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/06/01/ixnewstop.html He’s a prat. Conrad Black’s pet poodle, the “quality paper” equivalent of the foaming mouth tabloid hacks who inconsistently rail against the world.

By: Barry

Barry — Fri, 10 Oct 2003 01:50:30 +0000

Chun, the best description of instapundit is ‘Rush Limbaugh of the blogosphere’. He’s got a big audience, he’s very good at pumping out right-wing BS. He was also an early starter, and helped out a bunch of people who were just getting started. His big technique is to link to a story and add a comment or two about how it proves whatever he wants proven. If/when challenged on the story, his standard response was to say that he hadn’t read it. I used to think that this was at least clever of him, until I realized that he’s a law professor, and that he was just doing the blog equivalent of putting a friendly witness on the stand and leading the witness through some perjured testimony.

By: Zizka

Zizka — Thu, 09 Oct 2003 22:10:30 +0000

To me, the Plame case is a litmus test of how far “rational conservatives”, libertarians, independents, and moderates will go in order to avoid supporting an evil Democrat. (The hard right, I’m convinced, will support Bush no matter what.) But I’m not at all confident that they’ll turn—and a lot of the media has already signed on to Bush’s spin points. The Plame story could just disappear. To me, even by conservative standards Bush has done a number of things which should make moderates and conservatives give up on him. But obviously my left-liberal opinion counts for nothing here, and all I can do is sit and watch.

By: howard

howard — Thu, 09 Oct 2003 21:46:24 +0000

Chun, prof instanitwit is a purveyor of mindless drivel to the already converted. Pay him no heed. Excellent take-down of Steyn, another purveyor of mindless drivel.

By: JohnC

JohnC — Thu, 09 Oct 2003 21:32:02 +0000

Chun, the only reason anybody pays attention to him is the disconcerting fact that he is the #1 blog in eyeballs and links. Millions of flies can’t be wrong.

By: David

David — Thu, 09 Oct 2003 21:15:44 +0000

“Smart people who play stupid are extremely irritating.” So true, so true.