<< INTOLERANCE MAPPED ~ MAIN ~ ASSUMPTION CORRECT >>
REALITY BESPOKEN
Soon it will be impossible to ridicule these people, seeing as they do such a fine job of it themselves. Here’s Professor Juan Cole:
The story of the interlibrary loan request for Mao’s Little Red Book that produced an interview by the Department of Homeland Security turns out to be a hoax.
However, it is one of those hoaxes that bespeaks a reality ...
Strange, as reader chrisbg99 observes, that the same logic isn’t applied to pre-war WMD claims. Didn’t that “hoax” also “bespeak a reality”?
Well, and Instapundit has a story mocking Daily Kos—whose real name, I think, is Kos “Kos” Kosziga or something—for not being able to afford a house in hyperregulated, hypertaxed, market-force-impaired San Francisco (or as locals call it, “Kosco”).
Oh Lord, please grant me this one thing: that Kos moves somewhere, buys property and has a child. The becoming a Republican who resents high taxes and unresponsive government bureaucracies part will take care of itself.
Mikeg—it doesn’t work like that. Kos would be the kind of asshole “neighbor” who spends his days suing the school district over its nativity creche and taking out injunctions against folks who trytomove in after him…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 12 25 at 05:30 PM • permalinkAu contraire, Cole is absolutely right: this is a hoax that definitely “bespeaks a reality” - the reality being that Cole and his fellow leftoids are f***ing idiots.
Posted by Urbs in Horto on 2005 12 25 at 08:34 PM • permalinkI figured this out while reading a old Superman comic book. Obviously these people are living in Bizzaro Earth and due to some sort of time-space continuim, they keep popping up on our Earth. Just think of the hassles that our Juan Cole must be going under, stuck in bizzaro Juan Cole’s earth. Of course, he’s probably dead by now. At some point the bizzaro Cole must notice that he isnt living in a facist dictatorship. After all, just looking around he should be able to see NO ONE has one of those Evil Spock Beards. Always a tip off.
Posted by jeff mccabe on 2005 12 25 at 10:08 PM • permalinkSorry, almost no one. Remember when Gore was running around with the beard? Not so funny now is it?
Posted by jeff mccabe on 2005 12 25 at 10:10 PM • permalinkThere is a difference between the WMD issue and the Red Book story.
WMD’s in Iraq was no lie. Everybody believed it including just about every intelligence agency on the planet. Turns out Saddam probably was playing some kind of double or triple bluff that only a mind like his could conjure up. Besides who doubts that left to himself he would soon have his old toys back. Especially with what we now know about the sanctions.
On the other hand the red book story was a lie. As transparent and implausible as it was malicious. And look how many people fell over themselves to believe it and spread it. Facts and truth do not matter to these people. Theirs is a fantasy romantic world full of white knights, wicked witches and dragons. That’s why so many of them spend their lives in universities. To go outside and face reality would involve having to grow up.
So, I see that Cole is an oppressor of history at the University of Michigan. Not a historian that values facts very highly, I’m afraid. He states in his little burst of indignation that the Bush administration, with the unwarranted surveillance (btw, he points out that “unwarranted ” is not a pun - har, har, good one Perfessor), has reached new heights of criminality. Evidence, please? Is it because Bush is doing pretty much the same thing as Clinton with respect to NSA eavesdropping? Is it then guilt by association, or what, exactly? Cole also claims that some people of his acquaintance have been questioned for importing Arabic books. What kind of books, Juanito? Agroeconomics textbooks, or Jihad for Dummies? And questioned by whom? Sounds like the Unreality-based Community to me.
Juan R. I. Cole is author of the weblog Informed Comment, which covers the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq and other developments in the Middle East. He is a Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History in the History Department at the University of Michigan.
Professor Cole obtained his B.A. in History and Literature of Religions at Northwestern University (1975), his M.A. in Arabic Studies/History at American University in Cairo (1978), and his Ph.D. in Islamic Studies at University of California Los Angeles (1984). He was the recipient of Fulbright-Hays fellowships to India (1982) and Egypt (1985-1986). Since 1999 he has been the editor of The International Journal of Middle East Studies, and has served in professional offices for the Middle East Studies Association and the American Institute of Iranian Studies.
The Bespoken OneHandsome son of a bitch, ain’t he? Awwww hell, now this asshole made me swear on Christmas. That pisses me off. Shit!
Sure hope NSA has tagged his phone and his phone calls, cause for all intents and purposes, this ugly bastard, is an Islamist.
Sometimes the low-caliber commentary of these people (Ivins, Kingston, Dowd, Rich, Krugman) makes me wonder why we pay any attention to them at all?
Oh yeah ... because the world’s biggest print publications sponsor them, and not any of a thousand more intelligent writers who don’t happen to also be leftists.
Dumb question.
Posted by Rittenhouse on 2005 12 25 at 11:37 PM • permalinkI wonder how many Nigerian mail scams this turkey has fallen for??
They seem to be as “factually reality based” as his paranoid mind can handle.
Any chance of a once a day black hellicopter flyby by one of our resident evil neo con cabal members? Should be enough to make his head pop.Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2005 12 25 at 11:50 PM • permalink#10 Liz,
Considering Cole’s paranoia, I think it should be bespooked.Posted by Michael Lonie on 2005 12 26 at 12:02 AM • permalinkHeres another lovely “reality based” bit of reporting from kindymedia. Nothing ani semetic here, nup not at all.
A lefty peace and love site which is more or as racist (as long as its JOOOS) as any nazi site.http://www.sydney.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=63013&group=webcast
Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2005 12 26 at 12:03 AM • permalinkI’d just like to echo Geoff’s (#17) remarks.
Before the second war on Iraq, everyone believed that Saddam had in his possession considerable stores of WMD material. It was an entirely bipartisan issue. Democrats, Republicans, hell even the UN (and more importantly, UN inspectors including - but not limited to - renown child appreciator, Scott Ritter).
Everyone agreed that Saddam possessed them, and that something had to be done about it. The road diverged only at what that something would consist of.
Leftists believed that the previous 12 years of completely fruitless UN resolutions and condemnations were doing a bang up job. Conservatives wanted regime change.
In the case of this red book nonsense, as was the case of the CNN Bush memo and the plastic turkey, the left rushes to unconditionally accept and act upon a story that is initially sketchy and unverified, then totally debunked. Even after the story is debunked, a significant portion wheel out the “fake but true” nonsense.
The same cannot be said of Iraq and WMD. The intelligence agencies of the west - including those of France and Germany - had concluded based on the best available information that Saddam possessed significant stores of WMD, and was engaged in an ongoing program to develop nuclear weapons. It was their advice that Bush acted upon.
For the leftist journalists, failure to act upon a fake turkey story deprives their drooling readership of yet another opportunity to laugh at Chimpy MacHallibush’s innate stupidity. That’s the extent of the consequences they face.
For the President of the United States, failure to act upon WMD information provided to him by the intelligence agencies of the western nations and the UN weapon’s inspectors, could result in a million Americans dying. Some from the blast wave, some from the fireball and a hell of a lot more from fallout.
Posted by Mike Jericho on 2005 12 26 at 12:09 AM • permalinkI thought this guy’s name rang a bell. Unfortunately I’m not good at linking but go to The Buggy Professor site.[www.thebuggyprofessor.org]
This is Prof Michael Gordon of UC Santa Barbara and living breathing proof that not all Political Science/Middle East Studies academics are bad or mad. First read what he has to say about himself. Then read what he has to say about Prof Cole in his first and third instalments of his article on Pape’s book published earlier this year.
Juan Cole - a leading apologist for Islamist extremism and even terrorism
On Jihad as a religion-sanctioned use of violence and war against infidels ... glossed over and sugarcoated by the pc-infested apologists in the Middle East Studies Association in this country, one of whose heads bragged after 9/11 that he was glad none of the members had remotely predicted such a terrorist attack from fundamentalist Muslims, and the current head (Juan Cole) who has tried to carry out a personal but secret campaighn to smear the major Middle East scholar who has uncovered the towering defects of their work on Islamist movements and the pc-pieties that underlie their apologia ... see two recent and important book-length studies [ here and here ]. Regarding Juan Cole’s efforts to smear Martin Kramer, a scholar whose work in knowledge and insight towers above Cole’s feeble excuse-making pc-pieties, click on [Kramer site] and read Cole’s exposed character-assassination memo to his fellow pc-acolytes and Kramer’s astonished, detailed replies.
I’m glad I’m not a US taxpayer and thereby helping to pay for Cole and his ugly gang. Mind you knowing I’m helping to pay for the Australian versions poisoning kids’ minds is nauseating.
#17
Don’t mistake me, I fully believe that the information Bush (and most of the western world) had was truely believed by him. I also do not think the information was really false in that I think Hussein had the weapons and managed to get them out of the country or hide them.
Oh and neat having a post directly mentioned.
I have encountered some lefty blogs that are being quite adult about the hoax, though—so there is hope for some of ‘em.
Posted by The Sanity Inspector on 2005 12 26 at 02:25 AM • permalinkIf things were really as totalitarian and Cole and his ilk like to think, they would all be in jail or dead.
Or, as Lileks once said of another set of leftists who imagined themselves to be in the lead role of The Omega Man; If America were as bad as they say, they’d be bones in a Virginia forest by now.
Posted by The Sanity Inspector on 2005 12 26 at 02:27 AM • permalink#17, geoff: Turns out Saddam probably was playing some kind of double or triple bluff that only a mind like his could conjure up.
No, it’s not so hard to understand, really. All abhorrent aspects of the man aside, he is no dummy—he ruled a country as he saw fit, and he made only one mistake.
His seemingly ridiculous statements to the effect that, “I don’t have any WMD, and if you attack me, I’ll use them”, were calculated to do two things:
A) Cause the UN to fawn all over him (this part was not so tough)
B) Cause other states in the region, (including but not limited to Iran), to fear him.Saddam feared Iran more than he feared the US. He didn’t think the US would actually ever do anything, at least he didn’t believe that until it was far too late. And you should know the test questions on that attitude by now.
Consider that, and everything fits.
Posted by zeppenwolf on 2005 12 26 at 03:57 AM • permalinkA Dutch businessman has been found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to 15 years in prison for helping Saddam Hussein to acquire the chemical weapons he used to kill thousands of Kurdish civilians in the Iran-Iraq war.
Given WMDs were a figment of GWB’s and Tony Blair’s imaginations there must be a terrible miscarriage of justice here. The Dutch court must be under the control of Karl Rove. Why no indignation from the “Bush Lied” mob?
Posted by walterplinge on 2005 12 26 at 06:33 AM • permalinkwalterplinge—Ya gotta understand. WMD’s are not a war crime once you use them all up.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 12 26 at 09:54 AM • permalinkThis just in!
Frontpage magazine has an article on Jon.
NB: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20636
Posted by Go Canucks on 2005 12 27 at 03:46 AM • permalinkThis reminds me of a conversation I had with a leftwing cousin (he and his mom are into this really strange combination of Catholicism and conspiracy theories). He gave the usual “America is now a police state” and ” Ashcroft is thrwoing all dissenters in jail” yadda yadda etc.
After pointing out the great civil liberties that were curtailed in the CIvil War, WWI, and WWII, and noting that NOTHING remotely similar has occured today, I then said “If America is a police state, why is Michael Moore a millionaire?”
To which he replied “Well, Bush and Ashcroft WANT to send Moore to jail.”
And somehow that was supposed to explain everything.
Page 1 of 1 pages
Members:
Login | Register
| Member List
If things were really as totalitarian and Cole and his ilk like to think, they would all be in jail or dead.