quote:"Some of the critics today," Hadley added, "believed themselves in 2002 that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, they stated that belief, and they voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq because they believed Saddam Hussein posed a dangerous threat to the American people. For those critics to ignore their own past statements exposes the hollowness of their current attacks."
What others have been quick to point out is that the evidenced used to convince Congress was filtered and presented by the Bush team.
So, they're angry because people believed them when they were lying and are now being hypocritical by not going along with the lie.
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posted
Yes, but they had access to ALL the evidence, not just that provided by Bush. They're angry because they were just as gullible as the Bush team, the Clinton team, British and Israeli intelligence, etc. etc.
That they now want a scapegoat is not surprising, given human nature.
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quote: they're angry because people believed them when they were lying
Except that they were not lying. Being wrong about information that is provided to you does not make you a liar. The Intelligence committee members did not have things filtered and presented by the Bush Administration. The many statements saying Iraq had WMD's made by the Clinton Administration were certainly not filtered and presented by the Bush Administration. Statements made by France, Germany, Russia, England, and the UN were not filtered and presented by the Bush Administration.
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posted
Horse puckeys. Congressmen can't even get access to a harmless list of who met with Cheney for the EnergyCommission report. It's disingenuous to say that access to military intelligence information is easier to obtain.
posted
Dubya&Gang sending in their own team with the agenda to find an excuse to invade Iraq, while tossing out any data and analysis running contrary to that agenda is lying.
Equivalent to a man walking into a bank with a gun in his hand, demanding money, and getting caught. Then claiming that he isn't a bank robber because he didn't realize the teller might be intimidated by his gun, and just assumed the bank was being nice by giving him free money.
posted
Yes, they were lying. They claimed to know thigns that weren't true. That is a lie. They didn't know them. Likewise, the evidence used for the most telling argument for the war, Colin Powell's speech before the U.N. wsa full of obviously fraudulent evidence. Many of the claims he made could not have been true. These were lies and the administration has blocked attempts (which, by the way, Mr. Powell called for) to determine where these lies came from.
Or hey, how about the claims that Iraq had connections to terrorists and to 9/11. When they first started making those claims, the Bush administration merely lacked any reason to believe that it was true. But as time went on, people were able to evaluate whether this was at all likely and found that it was not. That didn't stop the administration though. Dick Cheney was making that claim 2 months after even the President conceded that it was false.
Leaving direct lies aside, there were the cases of outright dishonesty, such as ignoring actual hard data from experts that the claims you wanted to make were baseless. There's the Nigerian yellow cake thing, where despite being told multiple times that that allegation was considered to be not be valid and then having an investigation done by Joseph Wilson where he confirmed that there seemed to be no reason to believe it, they went ahead with it. Of course, administration officials claim that they never saw the Wilson report before they made this claim, which gives us the perennial Bush administration question "Are they lying or just realy incompetent?".
Or consider the aluminum tube story. The experts in the Energy department uniformly said that those aluminum tubes could not be used for the nuclear purposes that the administration wanted to claim that Iraq was planning for them. So, rather than do the honest and factually correct thing, the administration ignored their experts and went ahead with the claim anyway.
And then there's the evidence from the Downing Street Memo, that shows that the Bush administration considered going to war in Iraq inevitable after 9/11 and that they were deliberately recasting the intelligence to support this case. This doesn't mean they were telling out and out lies, but it reflects rather poorly on their general honesty.
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posted
They did not have access to all the evidence. It seems hardly a new report comes out that I do not read something along the lines of "this information was not in reports/summaries given to Congress".
Heck, lets look at this NIE he talks about. Its come out that some of its major points were known to be bad intelligence -- one of them was that Iraq was receiving large numbers of aluminum tubes for use in nuclear centrifuges, which the Energy department had already categorically dismissed as laughable evidence of pursuing nuclear weapons (one person involved suggested that if Iraq wanted to use the tubes for that purpose we should encourage them, since it would set back their timeline for potentially refining enough nuclear material back decades).
Apparently the CIA wrote 15 reports to Congress on the aluminum tubes.
quote:But several Congressional and intelligence officials with access to the 15 assessments said not one of them informed senior policy makers of the Energy Department's dissent. They described a series of reports, some with ominous titles, that failed to convey either the existence or the substance of the intensifying debate.
However, the CIA had already been in close communication with the Energy department and knew that the Energy department thought the notion of the tubes being used for nuclear centrifuges was incredibly silly. You know, the Energy department that employs lots of nuclear experts?
posted
Oh, and its worth pointing out the article covers a few of the lies, specifically by Rice and Cheney.
I highly suggest reading the article, its remarkably informative as to how distorted the intelligence was, including that which reached Congress.
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posted
If we assume that Bush lied, and the Democrats were merely mistaken, then it's easy enough to conclude that Bush lied and the Democrats were merely mistaken.
Still. Is it really wise for Democrats to tell everyone now that when they said Hussein was a grave danger that had to be taken out, they were expressing certainty about things they knew nothing about? After all, the rest of us knew the danger was questionable. I heard the President's speeches, and I knew his points were not conclusive. If they're that naive, why would I want to give them power?
posted
As I've said before, I don't know if Bush lied or not. I can document lies by Cheney and Rice, though (the NYT article, above, has a couple).
I'm not assuming they lied, I'm finding things we have strong evidence they knew that they later made statements which contradicted.
Furthermore, I have evidence that the Democrats (and Republicans) in Congress were not told these same things, but were instead only told other things, things in line with the lies of Cheney and Rice. Because of this evidence, I do not think the Democrats and Republicans who said they had seen evidence of WMD in Iraq lied, because I do not have evidence they had seen the contradictory evidence given to, among others, Cheney and Rice.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Also, the vote wasn't to attack Iraq, it was to allow for the possibility of the use of force once other methods had failed.
Not failed as in what had happened BEFORE the vote...we all know Iraq wasn't exactly a compliant nation in the years preceding...but I keep hearing that vote represented as a carte blanche for war.
I know for a fact that most of the Dems I heard after the vote were cautious about the possibility of entering Iraq, but Bush had been fairly clear about the use of force being a last option....
Not the first option it actually was, and not a predetermined action as the Downing Street memo shows it was.
Their mistake was believing Bush when he said violence was a last option. And now he is trying to say those same Dems are responsible for the war, that they wanted war and approved it before hand completely.
Welcome to the high spin zone yet again.
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posted
I have read this report WMD and I would believe it long before I believed anything from the NYTimes
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posted
Of course you would...even though the facts prove most of those reports as false.
We know truth has little bearing on the political realities currently, but thak you for at least admitting it has no bearing for you. Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
Strangely enough, the administration now acknowledges that report was full of major errors. You can find it out from other sources, of course, but the NYT article happens to mention it.
Never mind that the NYT article makes its point through copious quotations, you've already chosen to ignore it.
Since you assume those who present evidence disagreeing with you are lying, its no wonder you see lies everywhere, and are never persuaded.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
From the NYT article Precisely how knowledge of the intelligence dispute traveled through the upper reaches of the administration is unclear. Ms. Rice knew about the debate before her Sept. 2002 CNN appearance, but only learned of the alternative rocket theory of the tubes soon afterward, according to two senior administration officials. President Bush learned of the debate at roughly the same time, a senior administration official said.
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
another Last week, when asked about the tubes, administration officials said they relied on repeated assurances by George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, that the tubes were in fact for centrifuges. They also noted that the intelligence community, including the Energy Department, largely agreed that Mr. Hussein had revived his nuclear program.
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
I apologize, I thought that was the NIE link on first glance.
I quote you the purpose of the commission, though:
quote:the Commission was charged with assessing whether the Intelligence Community is sufficiently authorized, organized, equipped, trained, and resourced to identify and warn in a timely manner of, and to support United States Government efforts to respond to, the development and transfer of knowledge, expertise, technologies, materials, and resources associated with the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, related means of delivery, and other related threats of the 21st Century and their employment by foreign powers (including terrorists, terrorist organizations, and private networks).
The commission was not looking into how the administration dealt with intelligence it got from sources, but in the intelligence community itself.
IOW, you can believe both that report and the NYT article .
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
This was a failure at many levels and is the fault of years of bad policy that ran the CIA and Intelligence community in general, but instead of looking at that, we must simply insist that Bush lied and the fault lies only with him. Wouldn't it be much more effective to investigate the CIA and find out what is going on there?
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quote: Since you assume those who present evidence disagreeing with you are lying, its no wonder you see lies everywhere, and are never persuaded.
I did not say that the NYT article lied. I am simply saying that they present things in a certain fashion to make Bush and the rest be the only guilty ones when that is clearly not the case.
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I have no evidence Bush lied, I don't say he did, and won't unless I have evidence.
If the failure was at many levels, wouldn't it be more effective to investigate at many levels?
In fact, since we've already investigated pretty thoroughly at the CIA, and found among other things the administration was being informed there was significant dissent by the energy department on the aluminum tubes, yet both Rice and Cheney made definitive statements about the tubes being for use in nuclear centrifuges, I would think that it would be natural to move to investigating them, given the results of the initial investigation point that way.
Here's a quotation from the report you linked:
quote:While noting that there was disagreement within the Intelligence Community concerning the most likely use for the tubes, the CIA pointed out that there was also interagency consensus that the tubes could be used for centrifuge enrichment
This is in reports to administration officials. Strange that afterwards, Rice said they "are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs", given that the Intelligence Community told senior administration officials, which she would certainly be part of, about dissent. Because, knowing about that dissent, her statement is a lie.
Cheney also talked about the tubes as "irrefutable evidence" of a new nuclear weapons program, another lie if he was party to the reports that the report you linked say senior administration officials got, which he almost certainly was, given his office spearheaded the justification for the war.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
No, the NYT article goes over the failures of the intelligence community on the aluminum tubes far more in depth, the report you linked only gives a moderately detailed overview.
Moreso, the NYT article and the report are consistent with each other.
Moreso, the report was not tasked to look for failures beyond the intelligence community, so of course it didn't find any (and it doesn't assert there weren't any, it just doesn't touch on the subject). Its one of those weird "not looking for it and didn't find it" paradoxes .
Furthermore, the report you linked does talk about senior administration officials being told of the dissent, but does not talk about members of Congress being so informed. The NYT article, entirely consistent with this, says:
quote:But several Congressional and intelligence officials with access to the 15 assessments said not one of them informed senior policy makers of the Energy Department's dissent. They described a series of reports, some with ominous titles, that failed to convey either the existence or the substance of the intensifying debate.
Note that of these 15 assessments, members of Congress only received access to a subset of them pre-war. Some only went to high level administration officials.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
(I should point out the NYT article also says some intelligence officials say some of the assessments did include mention of the debate on the aluminum tubes. I am not aware they assert those included assessments going to Congress, and all members of Congress who have said one way or the other have said they were never informed of the debate over the aluminum tubes).
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Fugu13, let's read that statement again in full context....
quote: Despite this disagreement, the CIA informed senior policymakers that it believed the tubes were destined for use in Iraqi gas centrifuges. 34 While noting that there was disagreement within the Intelligence Community concerning the most likely use for the tubes, the CIA pointed out that there was also interagency consensus that the tubes could be used for centrifuge enrichment. 35 This consensus on capability led many analysts at both CIA and DIA to think that the tubes supplied the evidence that Iraq was starting to "reconstitute" its nuclear program. 36
The first part of the paragraph is pretty important. Yes, the Bush Administration made a stronger statement than they should have, but I am sure that Tenet said that they could probably say what was said with reasonable certainty. I think some here are going off on me because they believe I am saying things I have not said, which is ironic because it shows that the Intelligence they are gathering and presenting about me is just as faulty as the WMD intelligence was. We are looking back at Iraq with 20/20 hindsight. Before 9/11, before the first Gulf War, everyone believed that Iraq had WMDs. There is no dispute about that at all. That assumption colored everything we looked at. Intelligence agencies 'knew' for well over a decade that Iraq had WMDs. Now after going invading Iraq we discover that he no longer posseses WMDs. For me, the WMD arguement is the weakest one for invading Iraq but the one the press seizes on the most because that part of it has a lot of conflict. A much bigger reason would be because of Hussein's constant flaunting of the UN Resolutions against him which I believe emboldened people like Bin Laden into thinking we (and the UN) are nothing but paper tigers. Bin laden was probably aware of the completely corrupt Oil for Food program. No one seems to be as outraged about Annan's lies, France, Germany and American businesses involvement in the Oil for Food program which caused countless deaths. We had as much reason to bomb Iraq as we did Bosnia and Kosovo.
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Yes, the intelligence community was very mistaken in what they presented to senior policy makers. However, Rice and Cheney's statements go above and beyond what was presented to them, according to the very report you linked to. The intelligence community at least mentioned there was disagreement as to what they would be used for, while Rice and Cheney both stated with certainty they were for use in developing nuclear weapons.
That is a lie.
If they had added "with reasonable certainty" or other qualifier, as you suggest Tenet might have supported (and some parts of the CIA even called for in various speeches) it wouldn't have been, but they didn't. They stated as an absolute something that was still up in the air.
They lied.
There's a big difference between statements similar to "Iraq is using these tubes to make nukes" and statements similar to "Iraq has these tubes that could be used to make nukes, but they could also be used for other things and at least some people think they are used for other things".
What's sort of funny in a sick sort of way is that the Energy department never said the tubes couldn't be used in a nuclear centrifuge -- something the CIA has made a point about. And of course, they could, it would just be a really bad idea. I could use old pipes I found in my backyard in a nuclear centrifuge, but I wouldn't expect someone would use that for evidence I was making nuclear weapons. The Energy department's desire to be accurate conflicted with the CIA's intent to seizze on any potential support for their position.
The consensus certainly was that the tubes could be used for making nuclear weapons -- its just that for many of the experts, that was about as meaningful as saying I could use old pipes for making nuclear weapons.
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posted
From the NYT article [QUOTE] But Senator Bob Graham, then chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said he voted against the resolution in part because of doubts about the tubes. ''It reinforced in my mind pre-existing questions I had about the unreliability of the intelligence community, especially the C.I.A.,'' Mr. Graham, a Florida Democrat, said in an interview.
At the Democratic convention in Boston this summer, Senator John Kerry pledged that should he be elected president, ''I will ask hard questions and demand hard evidence.'' But in October 2002, when the Senate voted on Iraq, Mr. Kerry had not read the National Intelligence Estimate, but instead had relied on a briefing from Mr. Tenet, a spokeswoman said. ''According to the C.I.A.'s report, all U.S. intelligence experts agree that Iraq is seeking nuclear weapons,'' Mr. Kerry said then, explaining his vote. ''There is little question that Saddam Hussein wants to develop nuclear weapons.'' /QUOTE]
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posted
First off, can we assume that every member of Congress made an INFORMED decision before casting their vote?
If I recall, it sure looked like a lot of jumping on the bandwagons, not wanting to look unpatriotic and posturing for their next election. And that was from both parties.
There's plenty of blame to go around, but now both sides want to pin in squarely on the butts of their opponents.
The Administration sold a line of lies, half-truths and might bes. There sure were a lot of folks that wanted to be seen publicly happily buying it.
Posts: 2848 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
This could go back and forth forever. Republicans that don't want to take the fall alone will try and suck Democrats down with them.
Two arguments I find particularly convincing for the Democrats are:
What was voted on was a resolution to approve the eventual use of force, it wasn't a declaration of war
Bush would have gone to war anyway. He said as much before and after the resolution was passed, that he didn't need any more authority than his say so to go to war. At least the resolution provided support to the army
Beyond that. There something the Republicans and Bush cannot possibly blame on the Democrats. The prosecution of this war has gone horribly. Bush is our commander in chief, and the buck should stop with him when it comes to military matters.
Why wasn't the Iraqi-Syrian border secured at the beginning of the conflict?
Why weren't toxic materials secured by American troops when we occupied their cities?
Why weren't museums covered, and only the Oil Ministry secured?
The pre war planning was sadly lacking, and that much can be blamed on Bush. He won't even admit that anything went wrong. That doesn't sound like a smart commander to me.
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posted
Actually, the resolution was, effectively, a declaration of war. It specifically authorized the use of force as required by the War Powers Resolution Act 5(b). 5(b) treats this authorization the same as it does a declaration of war.
Congress passed this authorization knowing full well that, unless something drastic happened, President Bush intended to deploy troops in Iraq sooner rather than later. The argument that Congress knew Bush was going to eventually use force is disingenious. If Congress did not think Bush should have used force, they should not have authorized him to do so. They may not have called it a declaration of war, but under the current legal structure, thats effectively what it was.
posted
Yes, but if you'll remember, right up until the resolution was passed, Bush was still pursuing diplomatic options and overtures through the UN.
After he had the resolution it was Go Time. But many congressmen were under the impression that it would be used as a bargaining tool first, and then if all else failed they'd actually go to war.
Bush promised further diplomatic efforts and came up short.
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posted
I'm not sure what you define as "Go Time," but the Iraq Resolution was passed on October 10, 2002 and Iraq was not invaded until March 20, 2003. That was five more months of dimplomatic efforts and posturing that, like at least the previous 5 years worth of diplomatic efforts, failed.
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posted
Not really. Bush got inspectors reinserted into the country with no restrictions on access like they had before.
That right there was more progress than had been made in the previous TWELVE years.
He gave them very very little time to try and do their work, claimed them ineffective, then rushed to war. When we got there, after a couple months of searching, everyone said "Where are the WMDs at?" and he said he needed more time. 200,000 guys combing the desert need more time, but 200 guys in little blue helmets should have figured it out in 2 months?
posted
Iraq had WMD’s. They used them on their own people. Fact. It was Iraq’s responsibility to show they had destroyed these WMD’s. They did not. Fact.
Where these weapons went, weather they were destroyed by cruse missiles or passed on to other countries is the unknown now.
Saying that we lied about Iraq is absurd and shows great bias. What needs to happen now is for us to help Iraq defeat terror and become a spark in the Middle East that will spread freedom and peace throughout the region. But I guess this is too much to ask for since this would be something that people would give some credit to President Bush for and the jealous hatred just runs to deep. It’s really a shame.
Posts: 2845 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
Lets see, we have one Dem voting against the resolution because he has doubts about the tubes -- total lies shown, zero.
Even had he read the NIE, all he'd have seen was there was little doubt about Saddam developing nuclear weapons; the NIE is lengthy, and I doubt most people in Congress read it themselves. He was told by the CIA director Iraq was developing nuclear weapons, then said so. No lies.
I've shown Rice and Cheney lied. You haven't shown anyone in Congress lied, or was privy to all the information the executive branch was (since the executive branch includes the DOE, and all DOE conclusions were heavily filtered, we can see they weren't privy to all the information). Where's the hypocrisy?
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote: It was Iraq’s responsibility to show they had destroyed these WMD’s. They did not. Fact
I find this to be a perversely curious statement.
You're putting the burden of proof on someone to show that they destroyed something that you still think they have. How do you prove that something doesn't exist? They turned over thousands of documents, more than half of which we didn't look at. And they opened their country with full access to inspect anything we wanted.
What else did you expect them to do?
If the police operated that way, we'd have a much higher conviction rate in our courts.
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quote:It was Iraq’s responsibility to show they had destroyed these WMD’s. They did not. Fact
For a decade Iraq had documented destruction of its WMDs to the UN. Inspectors verified this so we knew that the overwhelming majority of chemical and biological weapons Iraq had in 1990 were gone. In 2002 Iraq was asked to report its WMDs. It reported it had none. Iraq was asked to allow UN weapons inspectors to verify this report. The UN weapons inspectors searched and reported that Iraq was telling the truth. What else could Iraq have doen to show it had destroyed all its WMDs? Exactly how could Iraq have proved it hadn't built any new WMDs (the key accusation of the Bush adminstration)?
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posted
Yes, we all know how credible the NY Times is. Isn’t that the organization who had people making up stories? But that’s all beside the point.
Why was it their responsibility to show they didn’t have WMD’s? Cause they used them on their own people and Iran. Because that’s what the UN resolutions said. Oh…. That’s right UN resolutions don’t mean anything. Silly me.
The left does love the UN too. Seems to be a good fit, all talk talk talk. While hating getting things done done done.
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posted
The irony here is that the Iraqi's were telling the truth. Hans Blix of the UN inspection team had it right. The Bush administration had it wrong.
You can rant and rave all you want about it being the Iraq's responsibility to prove they were innocent. Maybe they did. That doesn't change the fact that we (the US, Britain, and the "coalition of the willing" had an ethical obligation to verify our data before we started killing people and blowing stuff up.
The undisputable fact in this case is that the Bush administration either knowingly lied about the situation or failed to do due dilligence in verify their intelligence data. Either way, we are talking about a serious ethical lapse.
The IAC was able to determine that the documents claiming Iraq had tried to buy Uranium from Niger were forgeries by doing a google search. If the Bush administration did not know they were presenting forgeries to the American people and the world, they were guilty of serious negligence. Killing people and destroying their homes, citieis and lives (ie starting a war) is pretty serious business. To do this without performing the simplest checks on your data is criminally negligent.
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quote:Why was it their responsibility to show they didn’t have WMD’s?
But your missing the point. They did show they didn't have WMD's and the Bush administration claimed they had evidence the Iraqi's were lying. It turns out the Bush administration was lying about their evidence. Doesn't that bother you at all.
[ November 14, 2005, 12:56 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
You don't need to rely on the NYT, its possible to show Rice and Cheney lied with just the report on intelligence gathering DK linked to, plus a couple directo quotations from the pair. No reliance on the NYT at all .
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Did the Democrats believe that Hussein had WMD--apparently yes.
Did we go to war on those beliefs without first triple checking them out? NO.
Did Congress pass a resolution authorizing the President to go to war? Yes.
Did some do so on the belief that he would use that resolution in a game a brinksmanship with the reluctant Hussein, but not go to war? Yes.
President Bush often used phrases which amounted to, "You can't negotiate without being able to back up your threats."
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
"Did we go to war on those beliefs without first triple checking them out?"
They weren't even double checked by the USCongress. Germany, France, Nato, the EuropeanUnion, Russia, India, China, Pakistan, the UN did their own double checks, and came to the their own separate independent conclusions of "horse puckeys!"
The US intelligence community was not the source of the disinformation campaign. It was a handpicked "tiger team" led by three Dubya political appointees given the assignment of finding reasons to invade Iraq who generated that garbage.
Posts: 8501 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:Did we go to war on those beliefs without first triple checking them out? NO
Wrong answer! If simple checks (for example a google search on Niger) had been done many of the Bush administration claims would have been proven false before the war started. The fact is that the data was not verified by any stretch of the imagination.
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quote:Iraq had WMD’s. They used them on their own people. Fact. It was Iraq’s responsibility to show they had destroyed these WMD’s. They did not. Fact.
Yes they did. In fact, I watched some of them being destroyed on CNN. Was it all of them? No. I would have lost interest. So would CNN and the U.S. in general. But we did have observers watching these weapons being destroyed.
Bush's claim was not that the weapons hadn't been destroyed, but that Hussein was attempting to rebuild the stockpile that had already been destroyed, and/or pursuing other WMDs. He had no evidence that that was true, so he made it up.
Hussein's "refusal to allow inspectors access" comes from the fact that the process of destroying the WMDs was over, and we knew it, but the U.S. kept trying to poke around Hussein's backyard.
BTW, Iraq used WMDS on their own people with U.S. approval. You forget, back then Iraq was on our side, and Iran was the bad guy. In fact iirc some of those weapons were acquired with U.S. help.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote: Why was it their responsibility to show they didn’t have WMD’s? Cause they used them on their own people and Iran.
Jay,
Again I ask do you understand that this was roughly 20 years ago? And that the US didn't have a problem with it then? You do get this, right?
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:The left does love the UN too. Seems to be a good fit, all talk talk talk. While hating getting things done done done.
Wow Jay. Just, umm, wow.
I'd like to think this was some kind of sarcastic wit in operation. But to actually revel in hatred is not going to win me over to your position in a million years.
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