You do realise it was Russia and China who were against causing the clusterfuck in Syria in the first place? At least in Iraq we bothered to come up with an excuse to go to war, even if there turned out to be no WMD. In Syria we didn't even bother to do that, we just said Assad is a bad person and sent in mercenaries and lots of guns and called them rebels and freedom fighters and watched the whole place blow up. Assad is such a bad person? Compared to the Saudi's? The Russians are the only ones who have stopped the place become an ISIS state by now.

I found Colbert's question about "unknown knowns" the most interesting, but here's the thing:

Bush was the Commander in Chief. He didn't present their "intelligence evidence" of Iraq's WMDs to the American people because he *had* to. He tells the military what to do, they do it; the people don't get "veto rights". The only reason he presented it to the American people (I still remember watching Colin Powell show satellite photos etc.) was to shore up votes for his re-election. Which is exactly what any politician would do in that situation -- make a decision, and present that decision in the best possible light to the voters.

In other words, when Bush et al. were presenting that stuff to us, they weren't selling the actual invasion itself to us. They were selling us an image of their own legitimacy and competence. Viewed like that, of course they aren't going to inform us of those "unknown knowns"; it would shatter the image of them confidently and capably doing what they knew they had to do -- which was the actual point of it (selling that image to us, I mean).


I was sold, at the time. As were most (but not all) Americans, including many many people much older and wiser than I was (and am). I now agree that the invasion was a colossal mistake and that Bush's presidency in general was rather disastrous. BUT, that being said, I think it is problematic to hold these kinds of decisions against a president beyond a certain point.

FDR decided to drop two atom bombs on Japan rather than continuing with conventional warfare and risking many more American (and Japanese) lives with an invasion. Many people have questioned (and continue to question) that decision. But FDR was there. He was the Commander in Chief, he had some facts and plenty of unverifiable information and suggestions from his cabinet and intelligence sources of the time, and he made the decision.

I don't envy people in power who have to make weighty decisions like that based on incomplete information, only to have people question those decisions by citing information that they didn't have at the time. For the rest of their lives.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMA4B2ZnQ2o

Significantly more substance than "WMDs in Iraq" ever had...

Presuming that I don't think it was completely stage managed (I do) or that Russia isn't trying to score cheap points at America's expense (it is).

But again, that doesn't make him wrong. The west, headed by the US, has been putting it's sticky fingers in to the middle east for over 50 years, and it's only gotten worse and worse. How much western equipment now rests in IS hands? How many WMD's did the US find in Iraq? How many innocent people have died in the decades of war waged in the name of what exactly?

You can gussy it up as much as you like, but the US has been preaching the dogma of the greatest nation on earth/leaders of the world for years. Leaders set examples, so I guess it's not a massive surprise that the world is in such a god awful state...

I have little regard for Putin but for most of this dog and pony show, he's pretty much on the money.

From personal experience, if Jack Russel Terrorists were actually as large as they THINK they are, they'd be classified as WMDs.

*controversy

Unfortunately fracking has become politicized and so there are no longer any sources of information that can be expected to be honest. It is now just another dichotomy: A completely safe method of resource collection, or a WMD disguised as such.

In my opinion - and i think Brand's too, though i don't want to put words in his mouth - the motivation to act based upon nothing but profit is the largest and most significant drain on happiness and especially the advancement of us as a people. We need a revolution of principle, a revolution of the mind, we cannot keep on doing what we are doing when it is so clearly not working.

We have been pouring the results of our productivity into bank balances for so long now. If our productivity was represented by food instead of money, we would have been putting corn into a hole in the ground for 30 years and wondering why people are hungry. In a system based on corn, prosperity of a nation is based upon the free and active flow of corn.

I ask this question of you, because i don't know the answer. Do you think that we can continue pouring our productivity into big holes that other people sit on for "whenever they might need it?" Is it reasonable to build a system based on flow, but let huge clumps of it gather and expect everything to keep running quickly and without turbulence?

It just doesn't work anymore. The very rich don't realise it yet because they can afford to pay to avoid it, the quite rich notice it when they sit in traffic for example, but eventually things will become so clogged up that they will have no choice but to notice that there are no quality schools, hospitals, roads, airports, shops nor people to do their shopping, cleaning, cooking and driving. We all benefit, including the rich, if money is put into improving our infrastructure and facilities. We all benefit when productivity is flowing freely and quickly through the system. The opposite of that is called a depression, and it's when people don't have confidence in spending their money... we know that, we accept it, people were repeating it during the recession. How come we can't recognise the polar opposite? We're in a semi-permanent state of inverse depression, where those at the top don't have the means to spend their money, so it doesn't move.

This is an idea that needs to come from grassroots, everyone needs to come together somehow and unify over this idea. Because you can't blame any one individual for taking advantage of their fortunate position on the uneven playing field, or for fighting for a better position on the field. We all need to agree that the playing field has to be even, otherwise eventually the playing field will not be worth using.

I cannot stand this poisonous idea that you cannot ask a company for tax and here's my argument against that:
A lot of people live in the UK and a lot of people want to buy coffee and other assorted goods (starbucks, amazon). Even including tax, there is a lot of money to be made selling to these people. Let's say there is 2 billion pounds in profit available to be made by someone. That's still profit to be made by someone, and whoever offers that service to them under the correct rules makes that money.

The problem is that there's 4 billion to be made without tax, and it's cheaper to buy the politician for a billion to ensure you get the tax breaks. That is the poisoned system that psycho-capitalism has eventually produced... And it's so naive to think otherwise... so naive to think that those with billions of pounds wouldn't buy economists and lawyers, tout the favourable theories, generally spend top money on creating the right environment to make more money. Whether you think more or less tax is a good idea, surely have to agree that whatever the rules are, we adhere to them, or the system that we so carefully designed it around will fail.

Why are people so reticent to believe that we're being duped? No, surely not, it's the government, they can't possibly be lying to us. They stood in front of us, bare-faced, and told us they weren't torturing people, they had intelligence about WMDs, they weren't spying on us all. They prove themselves to be deceitful but like toddlers we trust the adult.

Well, just to be clear... ISIS and any other al-qaeda groups anywhere in that region are still real "threats", just not directly or imminently to us (probably). And furthermore I wouldn't go judging the reality of these claims based on a 15-minute compilation of quotes put together by Cenk, many of which he subtly misinterprets (in fairness I skipped a handful because of that).

Basically, we can say for sure that Iraq had no WMDs, but there has been no retrospective on this because it is still a current event. Further, I would say that in this case everybody knows we're basically just bombing ISIS regardless of what legal excuse we use. I think Bush and Cheney just wanted to give the region an enema and still lie to us about it even today. There has been plenty of analysis on that in the last dozen years, none of which I'm an expert on.

One danger I see of political cynicism is to dismiss both sides as if their arguments are equally worthless. Just like with anything, ACTUALLY EVALUATE BOTH SIDES! For example: http://videosift.com/video/Last-Week-Tonight-with-John-Oliver-Climate-Change-Debate

Three in a row, if I may.

- Washington Post cranks the propaganda up to 11 in its editorial: Putin’s propoganda keeps Russians in the dark about Ukraine and more

- Robert Parry gives a quick overview of the desolate state of media affairs vis-a-vis Ukraine: Who’s Telling the ‘Big Lie’ on Ukraine?

- US intelligence veterans go public with a warning about the ongoing propaganda war: Memorandum For: Angela Merkel: Beware of Fixed Intelligence on Ukraine-- Think WMDs

Just wrong huh, Ok then this is gonna be fun.

Firstly I was answering the question posed by Russell Brand "Is Fox News more dangerous than ISIS?" Which any reasonable person, especially those who have had a family member blown away in Iraq recently can say NO They are NOT.

Second Point, was it Fox that was convincing the American Public of WMDs and warmongering, or was it everyone? There wasn't a channel you could find that wasn't fully behind the government because that is what they do. In this area Fox isn't special, you could've turned on CNN and MSNBC at anytime and seen a 95% to 5% reporting in for the war and against.

Also the fact that the public was much of a factor in the run up to war, not as much as you'd think. There was simply a lot of ambivalence but support for our troops. Due to the fact that we have an all volunteer mercenary force it's just a lot easier to ignore that Johnny is being marched off to war. It's not right, it's just how it is.

In conclusion, Fox, the News Network isn't worse than ISIS. They're just not, end of.

EDIT: Also it doesn't seem like I should have to point this out to people but I guess I do. Russell Brand is a funny comedian, he is not fucking Noam Chomsky. He isn't around to provide cogent analysis and if I met him I would agree with some things he says and destroy him on his ridiculous hyperbole. He's not meant to report to us in an honest way, that's not what he does that's not what he's known for. Look for people like this to inject insight into the discussion and you get exactly what you deserve.

Wrong. The US gov needs shrills like FOX to keep the public 'on-board'. Classic example being the whole WMD charade. The US public needs to think they are 'spreading freedom'. If they were ever aware of the terrorism it's own government dishes out, the American psyche would collapse and there might be actual protests (and more). Which is why I like Brand's debunking of said propaganda and war mongering.
Do you think it's a coincidence the bitch is brown ? I even think they darkened her a bit.
CNN also did it with some other war mongering Lebanese cunt recently.
Here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZKqxxoUoYs

This must be where they hid all the WMDs that they smuggled out of Iraq. I mean, if you believe that happened.

That was good, but nothing's funnier than bush's 'where are the WMD's' gag.

Spoiler, Hitchens 'wins' the debate. I can't honestly say I've watched or listened to a debate between him and anyone were that did not seem to be the case. As often is the case though too, his grandest victory is understated, brief and easily overlooked.

Ritter thumps hard on the absence of WMD in Iraq to condemn the invasion, which on it's surface seems a strong argument. Hitchens casually references an unwillingness to be lectured on WMD's by those who cautioned against invasion for fear that Saddam would use those WMD on US troops. Scott Ritter went on Crossfire before the invasion to state that Saddam could easily reconstitute his chemical weapons and invading was too risky.