Say Anything Blog

When did Matlock become a terrorist?

Matlock?

How about producing those pay stubs from the CIA?

Una Salus Victus Nullam Sperare Salutem

How about producing those pay stubs from the CIA?

Which one, exactly, are you denying?

Also Hotel
You are just being cheeky. We all know the CIA pays cash. Just ask the people who collect the bills at those podunk airports in N. Poland

a well-known CIA Gulfstream plane, the N379P, had made several landings at Szymany airport in northern Poland in 2003

In 2005, Posada was held by U.S. authorities in Texas on the charge of illegal presence on national territory before the charges were dismissed on May 8, 2007. His release on bail on April 19, 2007 had elicited angry reactions from the Cuban and Venezuelan governments. The U.S. Justice Department had urged the court to keep him in jail because he was “an admitted mastermind of terrorist plots and attacks”, a flight risk and a danger to the community.

On September 28, 2005 a U.S. immigration judge ruled that Posada cannot be deported because he faced the threat of torture in Venezuela.

He’s just chilling in Miami right now. Getting some sun. Going out to the shooting range with his buddies.

But he’s a terrorist, just ‘one of ours’.

I’m not sure you’re being intellectually honest with this line, Sparkie. 

When we funded bin Laden, he was fighting against the Soviet army in Afghanistan, not flying airplanes into civilian-populated buildings or beheading journalists.

And the US propping up Baby Doc when he took over for his father at age 19 was the equivalent of offering “economic carrots” to an impressionable man in hopes of him softening the corrupt, elitist, tyrannical policies there (kind of like Barack wants to do with Iran, no?).  When he rebuffed US aid, we cut him off and worked to isolate his regime.  Hardly the equivalent of “funding terrorism.”

And supporting an operative who held promise in undermining the Communist revolution in Cuba (though he obviously failed miserably at undoing Fidel’s regime)?  Seriously.

Are you suggesting that any customer who wrote a check to Enron “supported fraud”?  Sometimes, you do business with less than ideal people in hopes that they’ll prevail over even less than less-than-ideal people.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it fails miserably.  It must be nice to have the benefit of hindsight to make your perfect character judgments.  People who live in the present real world don’t always have that luxury.

Sparkie, at best, this is an uneducated, non-contextual summation of some poor judgments of character that our leaders have made in the past.  But since from your posts and comments that I’ve read, you obviously are not the clueless dolt who could make such an uneducated, non-contextual error. 

Unfortunately, that quasi-compliment means that this post is worse than an error, it’s a deliberate attempt to mislead lesser-educated people into mistrusting the American government even less than they already do, by getting them to think in soundbites that make sense on the surface rather than seeing events as they unfolded in time, with the additional benefit of after-the-fact analysis in order to glean useful lessons to apply to decision-making in the future.

Nice try, though.

Sparkie practices 20/20 hindsight.  It’s very easy for people like him to review past foreign policy decisions, declare them failures, and then strut about as though this were some example of their intellectual capacity and/or analysis skills.

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

-- Thomas Jefferson

Rob’s recently listened-to songs:

Sonofasillyperson,

I am not the one who has been broadly classifying terrorists of late. Get with the new lingo. You have you definition, I have mine, r108 and Carrick each have personal ones. So does the military, government, etc. Hey, I think some people even have definitions of, say, torture and so forth…

You can complain, but don’t take it out on me. I have not been mincing words, just trying to think up the implications of our now indeterminate, self-serving vocabulary.

Sparkie practices 20/20 hindsight.

Yea, with all the deniers and cold war relics around here, I’d say you guys need about a -7 prescription. Right now, you must only be able to see blobs.
Either that or you can see the past fine and are just naive about what you up to now.

I think the widely accepted definition of terrorism, “non-government actors who carry out violence against other non-government actors for purposes of influencing government actors” still applies, does it not?  What’s your “new lingo” that we should all be hep to?

And, yes, the US considers the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization, but not because they carry out such acts themselves, but they supply their technologies and money to strictly-defined terrorist organizations.  And to get back to your original dishonest point, funding, arming, or otherwise abetting current “terrorists” is worlds different than funding, arming or otherwise abetting people who later became “terrorists”; that is, of course, you expect everyone to be able to employ time travel in order to make their decisions and classifications, as you seem to want to do.

I think the widely accepted definition of terrorism, “non-government actors who carry out violence against other non-government actors for purposes of influencing government actors” still applies, does it not?

No, it doesn’t. Hamas are ‘terrorists’. Qadafi used to be, then he wasn’t, now he is again.
So if a person is payrolled by a government, they are not terrorists? We have financed tons of ‘terror’.
View the contras. Killing peasants to influence the leadership. Oh wait, we only fight wars like the Cold War or the War on Terror where all the peasants are our enemies. Socialism and its whole people’s government thing provides a sweet loophole for our acts of ‘terror’, no?

Seriously, dude, slow down and read, then process what I’m saying.  “Non-government actors who carry out violence against other non-government actors.” Yes, Hamas is currently the largest piece of a coalition government, but they only began in that capacity LONG AFTER they used more strictly defined terrorist activities (i.e., kidnapping, murdering, maiming of civilians). 

Qadafi’s armies were not the ones we classified as terrorists, it was the Muslim Brotherhood that he was funding. 

We funded the contras to fight against the Sandinistan junta, not to “murder peasants” as you state.  For crying out loud, read the website you love to cite, Wikipedia, to understand more about what the Contras were, for example, this sentence: “Most rebel soldiers were peasants angered by the Sandinistas’ collectivisation of their land and other grievances.” Get that?  THE CONTRAS (i.e., rebel soldiers) WERE THE PEASANTS!

And, seriously, “we only fight wars like the Cold War or the War on Terror where all the peasants are our enemies”?  You mean like the Ba’athist army that we fought (twice) in Iraq?  The Somalian warlords who had seized control of what passed for governmental authority in that country?  And I’m stymied by the lefties who tout the war on the Taliban (i.e., supporters of terror via their granting of safe haven to terrorists and the sponsoring of terrorist training camps), but deplore the Iraq war to oust Saddam (a supporter of terror via his cash payments to the next-of-kin of suicide bombers and the sponsoring of terrorist training camps).

You know what, I’m going to withdraw my earlier quasi-compliment.  Maybe you are a mal-informed, clueless dolt.

sonofasillyperson
you draw out nonequivalences that are bona fide, but at the same time… you swallow the propaganda spewed out at the time to get us involved in these conflicts. View the intel about the popularity of the commies in Vietnam in the 50s. We never admitted how many there were because we never would have gotten involved in that war otherwise.
Also, going to Cuba and sabotaging food and textbooks is terror. The innocents get killed in the meantime. Children go hungry and stupid. And we print in the paper that its Castro’s fault. Bullshit. Most of the complaints about Cuba and the failure of their chosen form of government stem from manipulations from outside there system and within their system from us, specifically directed at fucking it up. Terror.
Right after they were done fighting the Russains, the Afghan-Saudi fighters went to Bosnia and continued beheading people. They were terrorists when we bankrolled them and they continued to be. Your claim that Osama was not a terrorist until later is BS.
Moreover, we helped ‘Baby Doc’ escape. We didn’t cut him off, as you claim, but let him squander the resources so they wouldn’t fall into the hands of any socialist successors. Read his kill count. View the film in part two about the people we supported in Iran and Guatemala who killed women and children.
View Chile. Pinochet. He was a terrorist too, one of our chosen ones.

Sabotaging textbooks?  You equate that to the 100 million plus who died under Lenin/Stalin (and their puppets all over the globe, including Castro)?  You are a moral imbecile.

Sabotaging textbooks?  You equate that to the 100 million plus who died under Lenin/Stalin (and their puppets all over the globe, including Castro)?  You are a moral imbecile.
sonofasillyperson on July 11, 2008 at 12:05 pm

They did it too is not an excuse. No one is comparing but you.
Also how about the CIA supported Greek Junta in
1967? What was the excuse there?

sonofasillyperson.  Welcome.  You are one of a dozen here who appreciate millions killed by communism.  Try to ask the Chinese what happened in T-square a few decades ago… How many were killed?  How many children were mained, etc.  No response.  Liars.  Communists.

Communism is evil

Also how about the CIA supported Greek Junta in
1967? What was the excuse there?

The Cold War lasted from the early Fifties to the late Eighties.  You can look it up.

Leftie political philosophy, from a DU commenter:

It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. RUMOR IS TRUTH. The modern laws of media hype and political warfare have a useful tenet: Repeat ANYTHING or raise false concern over ANYTHING and it is likely to be planted in the conscious/subconscious of many voters.

Of course, Clinton did give OBL a pass; twice, I believe.

Leftie political philosophy, from a DU commenter:

It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. RUMOR IS TRUTH. The modern laws of media hype and political warfare have a useful tenet: Repeat ANYTHING or raise false concern over ANYTHING and it is likely to be planted in the conscious/subconscious of many voters.

e: Who controlled the Presidency and Congress in 1967?
When a Dem does this, you blame the US, but when it happens under a Republican administration, you blame the Republicans.  Double standard?

Leftie political philosophy, from a DU commenter:

It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. RUMOR IS TRUTH. The modern laws of media hype and political warfare have a useful tenet: Repeat ANYTHING or raise false concern over ANYTHING and it is likely to be planted in the conscious/subconscious of many voters.

First, USG never funded OBL, second, he was not, ever, a member the Afghani Mujahideen.  He was considered a money playboy and poser. When the Soviets pulled out OBL financed a wave of assassinations of the real leaders of the Afghani Mujahideen which led to the rise of the Taliban.

As for the rest of your list, spark, your Party, the Democrat Party, filled that bucket full of shit. Go cry to them.

Una Salus Victus Nullam Sperare Salutem

The Cold War lasted from the early Fifties to the late Eighties.  You can look it up.
robert108 on July 11, 2008 at 12:28 pm

And that in your mind is a good reason to militarily topple an elected govt and replace them with a military dictatorship? Wow!!!!

e: Who controlled the Presidency and Congress in 1967?
robert108 on July 11, 2008 at 12:35 pm

Go ask any Greek that sufferd (and the ones that did not) beatings, torture, imprisonment, exile, their property and land taken away, etc. if they give a rats ass as to who was president and who controlled congress. To them it is America that did it.

To them it is America that did it.

Ignorance is no excuse. It was done by Greeks.  Blame the guys who actually did it.

Leftie political philosophy, from a DU commenter:

It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. RUMOR IS TRUTH. The modern laws of media hype and political warfare have a useful tenet: Repeat ANYTHING or raise false concern over ANYTHING and it is likely to be planted in the conscious/subconscious of many voters.

As usual, leftards screech&wail about how evil America is, and ignore the fact that their Party, the Democrat Party, is the primary source of said evil. Socialism is evil, Democrats are socialists. Do the math, e.

Una Salus Victus Nullam Sperare Salutem