daddyholes posted:

how hard would it have been for the U.S. gov't to claim "the video has been edited, some of the key things we're talking about were cut out"? but they didn't and it had to come out in the press. so why didn't they? hmmm maybe its because they dont really give a shit what is actually in the video and only care about upkeep on their various lies.

Probably because the US government didn't release the video and don't really care about it because it's not really a particularly big deal and just sort of a weird sidenote.

Agnus_Dei posted:

discipline posted:

Well I watched it before they yanked it off the entire internet and

1. It's fake
2. It's so fake it's easily recognizable as being fake

The guy could be dead but he wasn't killed in this video, there is no beheading in this video, in fact there is no blood shed in this video. Yet it's immediately pulled off the internet and all media is reporting it as a VIDEO WHERE HE WAS BEHEADED, not allegedly, not purports to show, just IS.

So why did they pull it? If it's a casus belli then it's really irresponsible to not investigate how fake it seems.

And why did ISIS release something so fake?

i need to reply to this because when i first read this i dismissed it as totally delusional, but then it turned out she was completely right. mainstream news is now covering the issue that the video appears doctored. i have since watched the video myself and agree it is fishy as heck. so props

"same." --Superabound's Dad

Lessons posted:

the US was welcome to bomb ISIS in Syria as long as they coordinated with the Syrian government.

priceless.

NoFreeWill posted:

did you see the photo posted in this thread where his head is cut off and lying on his corpse?

dide you see the part where they cut off his head and then also, for some reason, went back and cut off the rest of his neck stump and all his vertebra so that the body would look much more like a mannequin stolen from the window of a Marks & Sparks

Lessons posted:

Well they didn't attack ISIS over the video (which was made weeks later) and they certainly didn't attack because the then-nonexistent video was being misrepresented and has weird cuts/fake slashing.

but on the other hand, no one said anything like that until you did. good points on all sides methinks.

daddyholes posted:

Lessons posted:

Well they didn't attack ISIS over the video (which was made weeks later) and they certainly didn't attack because the then-nonexistent video was being misrepresented and has weird cuts/fake slashing.

but on the other hand, no one said anything like that until you did. good points on all sides methinks.

Then why bring up the Foley commando operation at all in response to me saying the Foley videos/the edits to them weren't particularly important? It's almost as though you're aren't arguing in good faith...

daddyholes posted:

you also wanted a report on how my pro Assad Cah-RAZY propaganda was treating me a few months later. so a few days ago world leaders and their various propaganda fronts felt it necessary to respond in major news outlets to figures within their own parties and their oppositions alike who all suggested we should be friends with the guy lol. the people with more to gain/lose rejected that of course but i seem to remember something about that kind of talk supposedly being completely fringe?

You're talking about two completely different positions. The Tory foreign minister/US ambassador to KSA aren't endorsing anything like your position, they're saying the US and UK should pragmatically align themselves against Assad since ISIS is now clearly the bigger threat. You're saying something quite different: that we should support Assad (or the Syrian government/army if you prefer) because they're de facto fighting the US. These are mutually exclusive claims, you can't have both.

Lessons posted:

Also the stuff I was saying was never going to fly was way more specific stuff that people were saying. Stuff like "the human rights reports against Assad are just propaganda" or "the Ghouta attacks were a CIA operation". You still don't have a chance in hell of convincing people of that, but you might, if you're so inclined, be able to convince them that a US-Syria coalition against ISIS is acceptable.

Renowned journalist Seymour Hersh came out of the closet to say:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line

Petrol posted:

this but ironically unironically

daddyholes posted:

guess "when i said support for Assad was fringe i didn't mean THAT support for Assad" is the new "when i said ground troops would make all the difference I didn't mean the Navy SEALs". all in 24 hours too. amazing shit. i just wish youd told us you had planned for all these contingencies because you didnt post anything about it until they had already happened.

you want to talk about bad faith, you had an easy out here to be consistent, your statement that soldiers on the ground was an important benchmark. if you had come back here saying "it happened, things are different now", i cant speak for everyone but i would have said welcome to the team and said other people shouldnt give you shit for it. offer still stands btw.

You're grasping at straws here by completely ignoring the context I said those things in. "I would support Assad if the US was invading to depose him" doesnt commit me supporting him because the US launched a commando raid agaist ISIS (which, btw, the Syrian govt didn't treat as an act of war but instead said "Hey Obama you should have coordinated that with us"). You're acting like I set a Red Line and if US troops set foot in Syria I flip sides but that's not what I said let alone thought. And "you can convince Americans to oppose US intervention in Syria but you aren't going to convince them that Assad is a great guy because actually all the human rights reports are faked" definitely doesn't apply to cases of US generals calling for pro-Assad US intervention in Syria because not only are they completely different arguments they are literally mutually exclusive. What you're saying only makes sense if you refuse to distinguish support for Assas against US imperialism from support for Assad on the condition that he becomes an ally of US imperialism, which is not a trivial distinction.

If you actually get cases that resemble what I was talking about (like the hypothetical mission creep scenario escalating into all-out war between the US and Assad*) yeah I would absolutely change my views but this is some weak shit.


*to specify I still don't have red lines here, e.g. if US bombings kill 8000 ISIS troops and one SAA it wouldn't qualify for what I'm talking about. Again, context.

Petrol posted:

Superabound posted:

Renowned journalist Seymour Hersh came out of the closet to say:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line

swampman posted:

Put that on the front page if you don't mind? where the fuck are the mods?

I'd be happy to write something a little more substantial if people think the topic is front page worthy.

i do think it would be better for us to lower our standards for front page, simply to get articles moving through faster. i think the current self-imposed quality standards are a little high, considering the actual output at that level. would it then just be like, a blog? yes, but at least it would be our blog. and by the way, i am not willing to expend a single moment of work to achieve this, beyond writing the paragraph i just did.