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A story about a pathetic man's downfall


Francisco 2.0

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2 hours ago, Brisketexan said:


9ea8a8fb2340ad78ef516d425d901239.jpg

I actually apologized to him out loud when we were at his grave in Berlin.
No, we have no Bonhoeffer these days. We’re fucked.

The Nazis made sure Bonhoeffer was executed prior to the allies liberating his camp. He was killed April 9, 1945.  My father and the Ninth Armored liberated some of the Flossinburg sub-camps at the Czechoslovakian border, but for too many of the former camp residents it was a month too late.

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He did have slight neo-con leanings, but I would never categorize him as a traditional "Neo-Con" in our working sense of the term of the last 60 years.  Though many of his Democratic contemporaries were/are.  But story for another time.  And yes, Gore was never an idiot.  

 

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On 12/7/2023 at 2:52 PM, crash_davis said:

Who are the dipshits on this site who would still vote for this sleazeball?

DCAR

PilotsError

Whatever incarnation of Rex

Macklemore

 

On 12/7/2023 at 2:58 PM, aggie08 said:

Man, there's a whole lot more than that.

Incredulity, Poe, Fatty, TexasHammer, Sack, and those are just the vocal motherfuckers that show up here. Turkey Chew, GRUHorn if he's even located stateside, and yes, most of the Football Board. 

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2 hours ago, Snake Diggity said:

My guess is 20-35% of the users on this site will vote for Trump in 2024.

I'd bet 45-60% considering how many on the football boards deep throat the SEC! SEC! SEC! 

-- Make no mistake, joining the SEC was a total MAGA move, made well above CDC/Hartzell. By Abbott, BOR, and BIG Money Donors (et al) in the wake of BLM, Jan 6, etc. The foundational goal was to align the great UT Austin with the heavily fascist-racist, election-denying, Trump-loving MAGA South. Making $$$ and "big boy" football was the smoke screen. Of course, 99% of UT football fans bought it hook, line, and sinker. 

The SEC! SEC! SEC! move is a big "Fuck You!" to the liberalism of Austin and any Left Coast sensibilities. (I clearly recall in the 1980s-1990s when Austin was thought of as the Third Coast.)

Edited by BevoAbyss
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12 hours ago, WhatTheBuck said:

No he wouldn’t have. You’re wrong. 

 

No, I'm not.

 

11 hours ago, RomaVicta said:

I assumed the Gore remark was sarcastic. He was neither a neo-con nor an idiot.

 

No, it wasn't.

It really is amazing to me how many people's knowledge of the Iraq invasion begin and end with Bush Lied Cheney Bad, and they'll learn every detail possible to support that and somehow end up still knowing nothing about it.

It's frustrating seeing people lobotomize themselves over defending this point.

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1 hour ago, crash_davis said:

Those dumb motherfuckers are closet aggy. 

Actually, I'm going to start addressing those dipshits as aggy. There's no difference.

lol, great idea.

"Listen, aggie, blah blah blah"

"I went to Texas."

"Sure thing, aggie. Anyway, blah, blah blah."

I think there's some merit to this

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14 hours ago, Rimbo said:

 

No, I'm not.

 

 

No, it wasn't.

It really is amazing to me how many people's knowledge of the Iraq invasion begin and end with Bush Lied Cheney Bad, and they'll learn every detail possible to support that and somehow end up still knowing nothing about it.

It's frustrating seeing people lobotomize themselves over defending this point.

Well, I hope you feel nice and snug and warm in your odd little tower of knowledge.

My poor little auto-lobotomized pea-brain recollects, or "seems" to recollect, I suppose. Who can be sure when lobes are missing?

Anyway, I'm pretty sure we had a reasonably successful effort going in Afghanistan finally using special forces in the role they are designed for.

Suddenly, the president of the US and his minions start telling lies about Iraq's WMD capabilities and constantly suggesting that Iraq had something to do with 911. So Bush did lie. He also said that the WMDs Iraq had threatened the US. They didn't.

The neo-cons stated a purpose about the delightful welcome that our boys and democracy would get after we finished killing people.

That was on the surface. After the invasion, pallets of cash were shipped to Iraq with virtually no accounting because a PO Box operation was hired by the GOP administration to track it. (Vanity Fair) Also, sweet deals for buying up Iraqi industries were handed out to the rich GOP faithful. (Atlantic) Cheney's old friends at Haliburton where he had been a board member raked in 100s of millions of dollars.

Oh, and we squandered the unity of the world behind us after 9/11 and created more terrorists than we killed.

Annnnd, any possible success in Afghanistan was squandered because we pulled the special forces out of that country to attack Iraq from the north where Turkey, one of those gravely threatened by Iraq's WMDs wasn't worried enough support the invastion in any way.

I can't imagine anyone other than fucking lobotomized morons not privy to your elevated knowledge believing that maybe things would have been different without neo-cons holding sway, an administration willing to lie to set neo-con wet dreams into action (at least on the surface), and big money wanting to use their GOP puppets to do stealing on a large scale.

The Dems opposed the invasion but were too weak and cowardly to risk their seats to say and vote so.

Everything would have been exactly the same, I'm sure. Thanks for the convincing argument, my friend.

Edited by RomaVicta
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14 minutes ago, fattyflattie said:

Lol.  As they say, even Jesus Christ himself would need one hell of a tax plan as long as there’s a D behind his name. 

Is there a bottom, or a low for you? Is there anything that the career conman and criminal insurrectionist could do to lose your vote?

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Just now, Red Five said:

Is there a bottom, or a low for you? Is there anything that the career conman and criminal insurrectionist could do to lose your vote?

I'm guessing the only thing Trump could do to lose fatty's vote is switch parties and have a D next to his name.

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Is there a bottom, or a low for you? Is there anything that the career conman and criminal insurrectionist could do to lose your vote?

He’s a single issue voter - guns. He’s said as much. He also claims taxes, but his taxes are going up thanks to Trump’s 2017 tax plan… unless he’s 1%.
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4 minutes ago, RomaVicta said:

Well, I hope you feel nice and snug and warm in your odd little tower of knowledge.

My poor little auto-lobotomized pea-brain recollects, or "seems" to recollect, I suppose. Who can be sure when lobes are missing?

Anyway, I'm pretty sure we had a reasoanbly successful effort going in Afghanistan finally using special forces in the role they are designed for.

Suddenly, the president of the US and his minions start telling lies about Iraq's WMD capabilities and constantly suggesting that Iraq had something to do with 911. So Bush did lie. The neo-cons stated a purpose about the delightful welcome that our boys and democracy would get after we finished killing people.

That was on the surface. After the invasion, pallets of cash were shipped to Iraq with virtually no accounting because a PO Box operation was hired by the GOP administration to track it. (Vanity Fair) Also, sweet deals for buying up Iraqi industries were handed out to the rich GOP faithful. (Atlantic) Cheney's old friends at Haliburton where he had been a board member raked in 100s of millions of dollars.

Oh, and we squandered the unity of the world behind us after 9/11 and created more terrorists than we killed.

Annnnd, any possible success in Afghanistan was squandered because we pulled the special forces out of that country to attack Iraq from the north where Turkey, one of those gravely threatened by Iraq's WMDs wasn't worried enough support the invastion in any way.

I can't imagine anyone other than fucking lobotomized morons not privy to your elevated knowledge believing that maybe things would have been different without neo-cons holding sway, an administration willing to lie to set neo-con wet dreams into action (at least on the surface), and big money wanting to use their GOP puppets to do stealing on a large scale.

The Dems opposed the invasion but were too weak and cowardly to risk their seats to say and vote so.

Everything would have been exactly the same, I'm sure. Thanks for the convincing argument, my friend.

I think Rimbo is more right on this issue.  Of course we will never know.  But Gore believed, unequivocally (and as VP he had access to all of the intel), that Saddam had WMDs and was actively looking to share them with terrorists.  Gore stated that in multiple speeches at the time.  He couched support for the invasion by saying we needed more of an international consensus (and he was probably right about that in hindsight) but the die was cast and the US was going after Saddam regardless of who won the election.  Further, no one could plausibly argue that the Clintons would not have had a major impact on Gore as POTUS and both Bill and Hillary supported the invasion, with Hillary being in the minority of dems that voted for the resolution (21 dem senators and 126 dem house memberts voted against the resolution). I did agree with Gore that we should not have slowed down our fight against Al Queda but that fight was proving to be harder than we thought.

As to Haliburton, I think that line of thinking is just completely flawed and weak.  When the authorization to invade was made there was absolutely no way to do a formal "bid" process to support the troops and handle the oil fields and Haliburton was, in fact, the best US corp to handle the work.  Haliburton obviously made a shit ton of money but I do not believe, at all, that Haliburton getting the work played any role in the decision to invade.  I think Cheney was an idealogue and truly thought he was helping the country.  I don't think he actually did help the country but he was not motivated, nor was Bush, by Haliburton profiteering off the war. 

 

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3 minutes ago, Goofyboy said:


He’s a single issue voter - guns. He’s said as much. He also claims taxes, but his taxes are going up thanks to Trump’s 2017 tax plan… unless he’s 1%.

He's not 1%, but much like the rest of his party, he thinks he might be someday (but he won't).

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1 minute ago, Born to Run said:
6 minutes ago, aggie08 said:
No one says this.

You do not hang out with enough of your brethren, apparently.

Well, it was implied that no one outside of the dumbasses that he hangs out with in the oil fields says it, but point taken. Fatty always has been the quintessential example of aggy.

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12 minutes ago, YGIFS said:

Wait, Fatty is an Aggie?  For realz or just like a 'former student' kinda guy?  I always thought you guys were a little harsh on him, but if he's an Aggie...this changes my whole worldview. 

Wait, nevermind.  I don't have one anymore

Honorary.

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29 minutes ago, aggie08 said:

Honorary.

I do owe a few of them for kicking everything off out of school.  And for letting me lol every football season.  

52 minutes ago, Born to Run said:
57 minutes ago, aggie08 said:
No one says this.

You do not hang out with enough of your brethren, apparently.

Yeah, literally first 5 times I heard that were aggys. Nailed that one.  

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2 hours ago, RomaVicta said:

Well, I hope you feel nice and snug and warm in your odd little tower of knowledge.

My poor little auto-lobotomized pea-brain recollects, or "seems" to recollect, I suppose. Who can be sure when lobes are missing?

Anyway, I'm pretty sure we had a reasoanbly successful effort going in Afghanistan finally using special forces in the role they are designed for.

Suddenly, the president of the US and his minions start telling lies about Iraq's WMD capabilities and constantly suggesting that Iraq had something to do with 911. So Bush did lie. He also said that the WMDs Iraq had threatened the US. They didn't.

The neo-cons stated a purpose about the delightful welcome that our boys and democracy would get after we finished killing people.

That was on the surface. After the invasion, pallets of cash were shipped to Iraq with virtually no accounting because a PO Box operation was hired by the GOP administration to track it. (Vanity Fair) Also, sweet deals for buying up Iraqi industries were handed out to the rich GOP faithful. (Atlantic) Cheney's old friends at Haliburton where he had been a board member raked in 100s of millions of dollars.

Oh, and we squandered the unity of the world behind us after 9/11 and created more terrorists than we killed.

Annnnd, any possible success in Afghanistan was squandered because we pulled the special forces out of that country to attack Iraq from the north where Turkey, one of those gravely threatened by Iraq's WMDs wasn't worried enough support the invastion in any way.

I can't imagine anyone other than fucking lobotomized morons not privy to your elevated knowledge believing that maybe things would have been different without neo-cons holding sway, an administration willing to lie to set neo-con wet dreams into action (at least on the surface), and big money wanting to use their GOP puppets to do stealing on a large scale.

The Dems opposed the invasion but were too weak and cowardly to risk their seats to say and vote so.

Everything would have been exactly the same, I'm sure. Thanks for the convincing argument, my friend.

 

1 hour ago, sheeeit said:

I think Rimbo is more right on this issue.  Of course we will never know.  But Gore believed, unequivocally (and as VP he had access to all of the intel), that Saddam had WMDs and was actively looking to share them with terrorists.  Gore stated that in multiple speeches at the time.  He couched support for the invasion by saying we needed more of an international consensus (and he was probably right about that in hindsight) but the die was cast and the US was going after Saddam regardless of who won the election.  Further, no one could plausibly argue that the Clintons would not have had a major impact on Gore as POTUS and both Bill and Hillary supported the invasion, with Hillary being in the minority of dems that voted for the resolution (21 dem senators and 126 dem house memberts voted against the resolution). I did agree with Gore that we should not have slowed down our fight against Al Queda but that fight was proving to be harder than we thought.

As to Haliburton, I think that line of thinking is just completely flawed and weak.  When the authorization to invade was made there was absolutely no way to do a formal "bid" process to support the troops and handle the oil fields and Haliburton was, in fact, the best US corp to handle the work.  Haliburton obviously made a shit ton of money but I do not believe, at all, that Haliburton getting the work played any role in the decision to invade.  I think Cheney was an idealogue and truly thought he was helping the country.  I don't think he actually did help the country but he was not motivated, nor was Bush, by Haliburton profiteering off the war. 

 

 

So, both of you are starting way too far forward in History, but @sheeeit is at least getting close.

It's very hard to paint a short version of the story, but as short as I can make it:

In the immediate aftermath of the First Gulf War, the USA established a base on Saudi territory to monitor Iraqi compliance with post-war UN resolutions and treaties. SA monarchy maintains power by treading a fine line between allowing fundamentalist Islam to thrive and keeping it from ever being too powerful. Meanwhile, American servicemen and servicewomen being in the holiest of holy lands leads to some Arabs feeling really bad, bad enough to the point where they decide to Do Something. They head to Afghanistan, train, head to Florida, learn to fly planes, and then 3 of 4 planes manage to make it to their targets.

Any disagreements so far? I thought not.

Now, we know that the USA's base in SA was THE MAIN REASON for 9/11 because bin Laden himself fucking said so. He told us.

Now, in the aftermath, we need to Do Something. There are two things we decide we need to do:

  1. Do something about the Taliban so that random terrorists can't just fly to Afghanistan and plot against us willy-nilly.
  2. Do something about the base in Saudi Arabia.

The second bit is absolutely necessary: After all, they told us so.

But also terribly problematic. Saddam definitely had a WMD program in place, that was being held in check exclusively by UN inspections, flyovers, and other things the USA's base in SA was helping to do. [Discussion about The Dictator Trap and the fact that this program was certainly lying to him about their progress is not discussed here to keep this already-long summary shorter.]

Here are, more or less, the universe of all available options:

  1. Just close the base and stop monitoring. End result? Now the WMD program can proceed, and you've given Saddam Hussein nukes.
  2. Invade Iraq, eliminating the need for the base entirely by killing Saddam and ruining Iraq to the point where any future government can't pursue WMDs.
  3. Leave the base in place, but now use it also as a base of operations for
    1. a coup, replacing the Saudi royal family with... oh, almost certainly a US-hating fundamentalist theocratic regime, or
    2. trying to attack the very fundamentalist preachers the Saudi family supports so that... OK yeah this idea is so ridiculous I can't even finish the sentence.
  4. Keep doing what you're doing, encouraging MORE terrorists to continue attacking the USA for the crime of being in their holy country, especially given that the Saudi Monarchy is more or less continuing to encourage USA-hating fundamentalism for the purpose of keeping a hold on their own power.

All of these options suck ass. Options #1 and #3 suck more ass than what we chose. Now you might be able to argue with a straight face that, with perfect hindsight and an awful lot of assumptions, that #4 might've been a better choice. But it certainly didn't look that way at the time.

There's another problem: Saudi Arabia has become an ally. Yes, they are... problematic as an ally. But having any kind of ally in the Middle East, where there are entire religions revolving around destroying the great satan of the USA and Israel, is obviously useful. We couldn't bloody well say "Hey, everyone, we can't really consider SA our ally any more, we can't be monitoring Iraq from here..."

No, we had to give people a more palatable reason than that. So we had to lie.

It doesn't fucking matter who the president was at the time. It could've been Gore. It could've been Kermit the Frog. They all were faced with the same shitty options with the same shitty outcomes. Our government chose the option that they believed would lead to the fewest dead Americans.

Edited by Rimbo
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9/11 would not necessarily have been a terrorist’s wet dream had Gore been President.

Yes, the Clinton-Gore admin took Al-Queda more seriously than Bush-Cheney, who were more focused on Saddam from the get go.

And its a stretch to believe Gore would have gone through similar machinations as Cheney to justify a full-scale invasion of Iraq.
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1 hour ago, Eskimohorn said:

Yes, the Clinton-Gore admin took Al-Queda more seriously than Bush-Cheney, who were more focused on Saddam from the get go.

The same Clinton administration that repeatedly ignored the threat of al-Qaeda in the years leading up to 9/11?

Oh good Lord.

I also love this idea that Saudi terrorists give a fuck if the president of the USA is Republican or Democrat. They care as much as we care what major OU's starting QB is studying at that pisshole institution in Norman...

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17 minutes ago, Rimbo said:

Star Trek Kirk GIF

Hypotheticals. Mine gives more credit to Gore, who, you know, seemed to put country before self interest, and who might well have put competent people into positions of leadership. But, I do acknowledge your belief in the superiority of your hypothetical.

Edited to repeat I was suggesting a possibility.

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2 hours ago, Rimbo said:

 

 

So, both of you are starting way too far forward in History, but @sheeeit is at least getting close.

It's very hard to paint a short version of the story, but as short as I can make it:

In the immediate aftermath of the First Gulf War, the USA established a base on Saudi territory to monitor Iraqi compliance with post-war UN resolutions and treaties. SA monarchy maintains power by treading a fine line between allowing fundamentalist Islam to thrive and keeping it from ever being too powerful. Meanwhile, American servicemen and servicewomen being in the holiest of holy lands leads to some Arabs feeling really bad, bad enough to the point where they decide to Do Something. They head to Afghanistan, train, head to Florida, learn to fly planes, and then 3 of 4 planes manage to make it to their targets.

Any disagreements so far? I thought not.

Now, we know that the USA's base in SA was THE MAIN REASON for 9/11 because bin Laden himself fucking said so. He told us.

Now, in the aftermath, we need to Do Something. There are two things we decide we need to do:

  1. Do something about the Taliban so that random terrorists can't just fly to Afghanistan and plot against us willy-nilly.
  2. Do something about the base in Saudi Arabia.

The second bit is absolutely necessary: After all, they told us so.

But also terribly problematic. Saddam definitely had a WMD program in place, that was being held in check exclusively by UN inspections, flyovers, and other things the USA's base in SA was helping to do. [Discussion about The Dictator Trap and the fact that this program was certainly lying to him about their progress is not discussed here to keep this already-long summary shorter.]

Here are, more or less, the universe of all available options:

  1. Just close the base and stop monitoring. End result? Now the WMD program can proceed, and you've given Saddam Hussein nukes.
  2. Invade Iraq, eliminating the need for the base entirely by killing Saddam and ruining Iraq to the point where any future government can't pursue WMDs.
  3. Leave the base in place, but now use it also as a base of operations for
    1. a coup, replacing the Saudi royal family with... oh, almost certainly a US-hating fundamentalist theocratic regime, or
    2. trying to attack the very fundamentalist preachers the Saudi family supports so that... OK yeah this idea is so ridiculous I can't even finish the sentence.
  4. Keep doing what you're doing, encouraging MORE terrorists to continue attacking the USA for the crime of being in their holy country, especially given that the Saudi Monarchy is more or less continuing to encourage USA-hating fundamentalism for the purpose of keeping a hold on their own power.

All of these options suck ass. Options #1 and #3 suck more ass than what we chose. Now you might be able to argue with a straight face that, with perfect hindsight and an awful lot of assumptions, that #4 might've been a better choice. But it certainly didn't look that way at the time.

There's another problem: Saudi Arabia has become an ally. Yes, they are... problematic as an ally. But having any kind of ally in the Middle East, where there are entire religions revolving around destroying the great satan of the USA and Israel, is obviously useful. We couldn't bloody well say "Hey, everyone, we can't really consider SA our ally any more, we can't be monitoring Iraq from here..."

No, we had to give people a more palatable reason than that. So we had to lie.

It doesn't fucking matter who the president was at the time. It could've been Gore. It could've been Kermit the Frog. They all were faced with the same shitty options with the same shitty outcomes. Our government chose the option that they believed would lead to the fewest dead Americans.

I'm unpersuaded. This reads like the apologists for Bush who pointed to Clinton suspecting wmds as being the same thing as a disastrous policy to invade as we did.

No sale.

I'm not going to rehash it, but feel free to keep throwing your massive intelligence around and insulting the intelligence of anyone who disagrees. It's a great look.

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I thought I saw this on here somewhere but could not find it but it is funny enough to post again.  You can see that he's wearing a diaper even in 2004.

Needs to be made a gif and spread far and wide.  Cock a doodle doo, folks.

 

 

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