The 2008 Election

They are both sad stories. Here's the Pat Tillman story.

I'll admit that this does sound very slanted, but after much searching it was the one which seemed to have the most accurate and updated info on Jessica Lynch.

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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
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Thanks Mark F.

It's all coming back to me now. These are very sad stories indeed. It makes one wonder how many such stories have not be uncovered.

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Bleacheddecay

Thanks for researching those stories mark f. I haven't had a chance to do so. It is interesting to note that the two reporters mentioned in the Salon article as being most responsible for printing the government's story in the Jessica Lynch case worked for The Washington Post, the same paper that was the center of the Watergate reporting (All The President's Men) back in 1972/3 when journalistic standards were much higher.

As a further example of how difficult to sift for the truth in the age of the internet, just putting 'Pat Tillman' into the google search engine I found this bit of inflammatory nonsense on the first page:

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles...anexecuted.htm

jessica lynch is married and teaching school in her home state of west virginia.when she got out of walter reed,her hometown built her a house so she could use it for her disability.she has no memory of her rape and sodomy by the iraqis!pat tillman was killed by friendly fire that the us army tried to cover up.there is a statue of him outside of the cardinals facility in arizona.

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"A Man's Got To Know His Limitations!!!"
[Dirty Harry(aka)Clint Eastwood]

She has no memory of it because it didn't happen, which was the whole point of this line of discussion, that the government fabricated a lot of her story in an attempt to win support for the troops...

Lynch herself has accused the government of fabricating the story.

1. ^ "Myth Making", MSNBC (2007-04-20). Retrieved on 5 May 2007.
2. ^ a b "
   ", You Tube (2007-04-24). Retrieved on 5 May 2007.
3. ^ "The truth about Jessica", The Guardian (2003-05-15). Retrieved on 5 May 2007.
4. ^ "Pentagon plans propaganda war", BBC News (2002-02-20). Retrieved on 5 May 2007.
5. ^ Michel Chossudovsky (2002-02-20). "War Propaganda", Global Research. Retrieved on 5 May 2007.
6. ^ "Rumsfeld's Roadmap to Propaganda", National Security Archive (2006-01-26). Retrieved on 5 May 2007.
7. ^ "U.S. Psychological Operations: Military Uses Networks to Spread Misinformation", Democracy Now (2004-02-12). Retrieved on 5 May 2007.

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Hate to bump this thread, but, well, I will...still have some old replies I didn't quite finish to some of tramp's comments about economics, and socialism in general. All stuff that needs to be responded to, I think. But for now...

I remember, when I first read these posts in October, I specifically thought to myself "yeah, we'll see." I wish I'd replied then, because then I would have been on record as predicting that he'd try to abolish term limit restrictions again. So you'll have to take my word for it, I suppose. Lo and behold:

Chavez seeks re-election chance in referendum.

Millions of his own people signed recall petitions back in 2003, eventually leading to a vote. He won, of course, and as some have pointed out the election was overseen...but not by everyone. According to the Wall Street Journal, European Observers did not monitor the election because they said they'd had too many restrictions placed on them by the Venezuelan government.

As alluded to above, this is the second time he's done this: he proposed a similar reform in 2007, which was defeated (though narrowly). So he's just putting it back up again. Just keep throwing it out there until he manages to win. Oh, and the article above mentions that Chavez calls Fidel Castro his "mentor." How many of you really think he's going to give up power as long as he has the slightest chance of keeping it?

All this is after pledging that he would step down after his current term, mind you.

Yeah, this guy's a champion of liberty.

We'll see what he does if it fails again. But for now, he's still using democratic means to try and push his agenda. He's a crazy f**ker no doubt, but still not a dictator...

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Or some dictators are smart enough to realize they have to make everything look legitimate, and can't necessarily go on unveiled power grabs. Hussein held "elections," too. Castro played the game legitimately for awhile, as well. The elections in Venezuela may not be as farcical as those two examples, but it's far from clear that they're genuinely free and fair.

I didn't say he was a champion of liberty, I was merely saying that he's not a dictator and had been elected three times, both of which were true. Personally I have no time for the guy because I don't believe his intentions. However, is he really any worse for Venezuela than the guy who was there before him? It doesn't appear so and, while the last guy just looked after himself and all the other rich oil families, Chavez is at least putting forward programmes to help the poorer people of the country. Whether he's sincere or the programme will help as promised is another thing, but at least it's something for now.

I'd also point out that he has, at least, put forward a referendum, something we'd love in this country (and were promised, but that's a whole other thread.) If he doesn't win that, as he didn't the last one, I too can see him taking power, as I believe that he wants to be the political leader/figurehead of the whole S. American continent, but none of that means that my initial point was wrong.

Just as a naked dig and to provoke debate.

I think that the same could be said of a certain Western continental superpower too. I can certainly think of a few recent elections that may've benefited from being overseen by the UN or some other organisation. Not that they'd have been allowed to do so in that country either.

The UN is corrupt and "we" should remove ourselves from financially backing an obvious farce. The idea of the UN is wonderful, the current administration however needs a complete overhual.

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“The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands.” – Sir Richard Burton

Following-up on the "is Chavez a dictator?" discussion above:

Chavez seeks power to rule by decree for 1 year

Basically, he lost heavily to the opposition at the ballot box, but he's trying to institute this change before the change takes effect. Stunning.

Clearly, the extent to which this guy respects democracy is the extent to which he thinks he has to, and no more. He may be shrewd enough to try to do these things under a veil of technical legality, but that only speaks to his deviousness. In situations like this, I don't think that the technical distinction between dictator and elected leader continues to be helpful, or descriptive of what's going on.

Of course it's corrupt, 7th. Most centres of power are corrupt to some extent. You pay your taxes to a corrupt institution. The best we can hope for is that when corruption is exposed, something is really done, not just to stop it, but prevent it in the future.

TMK, this is what happened with the OIC and the Salt Lake scandal. Of course, I expect there to be corruption involving OIC members again, but atm it appears to be clean. You can only remove the cancer once it's been detected.

On the other hand, you have FIFA.

As for Chavez, as what's happened is pretty much what I said in my last post, I won't continue with it.

A matter of semantics though, doesn't every leader respect democracy as much as they have to? Hell, as wikileaks has proved, not even that much. Just as much as they have to admit to or can cover up.

We'll never know for sure, but I don't think so, personally.

I don't have any objection to the idea that virtually all leaders would probably take on more power than they should have if it were up to them, but to actively pursue it...to try so hard to obtain it...I think that speaks to something much greater than the standard problem of people in power desiring more power. It's a flaw in pretty much every human, but I think it's safe to say that the people expending such tremendous efforts to gain more probably have it a bit worse than the rest.

Anyway, I'm not posting this article to suggest that you (or Pidzilla, etc.) were wrong before, but to point out that someone not technically being a dictator isn't necessarily a very useful way of describing them. It's kind of like pointing out that someone with murderous tendencies isn't a murderer, but if they're exhibiting all the warning signs, and it looks like they only haven't murdered someone because they haven't yet had the chance, then describing them with the technically correct term can actually do a poorer job of explaining what they are than the technically incorrect term.

This is without getting into the fact that there's more than one definition of the word, and it's not always clear where to draw the line between having authoritarian tendencies and being an actual dictator.