Iraq: Violence 70% Down Since June

What shelter? who's going to shell you?
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What do you mean? If we are going to war all over the place, there must be a real threat. Isn't there?

In fact no one is going to shell us, so there's no point in starting WWIII with Iran. We might try talking to them, they are here to stay, and they need to establish good relations with Iraq, as recommended by the Iraq Study Group.
 
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spidergoat said:
Considering we went into this war, not for self-defense, but for political reasons, by choice, it is impossible to have a complete picture of what's happening without talking about politics.
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There is a very real difference in discussing the politics of the situation in Iraq and the foreign politics it affects and in couching any and all discussions about Iraq in partisan terms where one side is "right" the other "wrong" or "lying" purely so your "side" of the aisle can score political points and further their specious political aims. In other words, if you want to talk about the politics that are important and matter, that's fine. But that's typically not what you talk about and typically not what the Donkeys and the Elephants talk about. Everything is reduced to this worthless partisan red team/blue team, endless campaign contest that currently grips/ruins American politics. And I won't participate in it, nor do I think it's even possible to do so, objectively speaking. The argument isn't about reality. It's about the perception of reality and what that means for 2008.

spidergoat said:
Bush/Cheney's views are far from "objective", and that must be taken into account when responding to their rosy images of Iraq.
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And the Democrats are no better. They are just as untrustworthy, skew just as much information and say and do just as many asinine things. Hence, my initial remarks about tuning the whole fiasco out.
 
spidergoat said:
What do you mean? If we are going to war all over the place, there must be a real threat. Isn't there?

In fact no one is going to shell us, so there's no point in starting WWIII with Iran. We might try talking to them, they are here to stay, and they need to establish good relations with Iraq, as recommended by the Iraq Study Group.
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They hear you. You just have to give them nuclear capacity and everything will be fine.

I know you're fine with that, but you can't make other people accept to furnish a terrorist country with nukes.
 
They are allowed under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty to enrich uranium.

Also, there is no such thing as a terrorist country.
 
There is a terrorist regime; and you couldn't convince others to supply a terrorist regime with nukes under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
 
No there isn't. Terrorism is defined as the action of a non-state entity.

Iran is allowed to enrich uranium under the NNPT, and there is no proof of any nuclear weapons, so you deny this?

Israel, India, and Pakistan have all NOT signed on to the NNPT.
 
countezero said:
And the Democrats are no better. They are just as untrustworthy, skew just as much information and say and do just as many asinine things. Hence, my initial remarks about tuning the whole fiasco out.
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Well no, they didn't go to war by choice and based on lies. They don't hold fake press conferences. This whole war is partisan. It's based on the Neo-Con philosophy, not any need to defend the nation.
 
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countezero said:
You can try to cast sentiment into this all you like, but I believe the topic of this thread was percentages and you asked whether the decline you outlined in your scenario was actually a decline. It is. And I gave you a real-world example of why it is.
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so what your saying a relitive decline is the same as an absolute one?
because thats what it seems your trying to imply
 
pjdude1219 said:
so what your saying a relitive decline is the same as an absolute one?
because thats what it seems your trying to imply
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I'm not impying anything. I was responding to this question: "if something rises by 50% then goes down 20% has it really gone down." Yes, it really has gone down. And I gave a real-world correlation. Now, you're introducing the modifiers "relative" and "absolute" to try to make some larger point — after the fact. Personally, I'm tired of playing this game. As I've said before in this thread before, for people like you and Spider, there is no data from any source that you wouldn't take apart, parse over and manipulate in order to make it fit into your preordained viewpoint, and in doing so, satisfy your partisan objectives.
 
Shouldn't we take apart and question the data we are bring told from an administration with a history of deception?
 
Sure, but not if you're doing it for partisan reasons and your conclusions are preordained. You — and a few others here — have demonstrated time and again that this is exactly what you're doing. It's entirely partisan and political, and nothing can shift your appreciation of the war. So again, I say why bother talking with you?
 
Considering that everything about this war was partisan, including the preordained decision to invade no matter what happened with inspections, you're damn right nothing will shift my "appreciation" of it's effectiveness. I will remain deeply skeptical of any claims from Iraq, but if the news were really that good, it shouldn't matter.

Edit: My favorite cartoonist, Tim Krieder, said it best:

Yeah, I know it’s a bigass tragedy, and we’re not supposed to dwell on how we got there or point fingers or play the Blame Game now because we’re all in it together and we have to figure out where to go from here—but actually, no, fuck that: we’re not all in it together. Those neocon pinheads from the Project for a New American Century thought up this war, the Republican party followed the administration in docile goosestep, and the shithead voters supported it with bumper stickers and magnetic ribbons and their children’s lives, like they always do, every single time, and of course it’s a fucking disaster, exactly like us wussy liberal peaceniks said it would be. Things did not go unexpectedly, inexplicably wrong in Iraq; they went predictably, inevitably wrong. Conservatives have had absolute control over America’s destiny for the last eight years, and they finally got everything they ever wanted. It’s a big grisly Monkey’s Paw wish come true for Red America. And unfortunately, unlike the horrified parents in “The Monkey’s Paw,” who can hear their mangled son’s corpse shambling toward the door, coming home, they’re out of wishes.
 
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count said:
Sure, but not if you're doing it for partisan reasons and your conclusions are preordained. You — and a few others here — have demonstrated time and again that this is exactly what you're doing. It's entirely partisan and political, and nothing can shift your appreciation of the war. So again, I say why bother talking with you?
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The notion that fair and equable evaluation of the Iraq War entails accepting claims manifestly contrary to fact as equivalent to claims in general agreement with fact is very odd. We are not choosing between two parallel universes here.
 
countezero said:
I'm not impying anything. I was responding to this question: "if something rises by 50% then goes down 20% has it really gone down." Yes, it really has gone down. And I gave a real-world correlation. Now, you're introducing the modifiers "relative" and "absolute" to try to make some larger point — after the fact. Personally, I'm tired of playing this game. As I've said before in this thread before, for people like you and Spider, there is no data from any source that you wouldn't take apart, parse over and manipulate in order to make it fit into your preordained viewpoint, and in doing so, satisfy your partisan objectives.
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yes it has really gone done relative bot overall the net is an increase that is my point
 
iceaura said:
The notion that fair and equable evaluation of the Iraq War entails accepting claims manifestly contrary to fact as equivalent to claims in general agreement with fact is very odd. We are not choosing between two parallel universes here.
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At the end of the day, you have no real way of knowing what is "fact" and what is not. All you have to go on is the primary sources in the region or the secondary sources here reporting on data collected there. Both require a leap of faith of sorts. And your as biased as Spider, so what I said for him goes for you, too. You're going to find the data that backs your appreciation "factual" and the data that doesn't "contrary." Again, to argue with people like you on this issue is a waste of time.
 
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