wtf. i just totally missed over his second post. i saw it now and was like "wait a minute.... where am i?" i think this new board automaticsally shuffles you down to the newest post and tht fucks me up

Yeah, if you click the '2' or whatever number for the last page it throws you down to the bottom. It's annoying if you try to read other bits while it's still loading

the liberal democrats are not that distant in terms of votes, but since the uk election system is pretty shit they end up with about twenty seats. they used to be the dominant party with the conservatives until labour was founded in 1922, since when they have declined. they've had to redefine their approach and priorities because their centrist approach was not yielding any results since new labour covered that territory and to a certain extent they might only be able to afford being so likeable and cool because they haven't been in power for ages.
there are still areas where they win seats every time though, and for all its shitty rural englishness, colchester seems to be one of them, which is pretty nice.
also david cameron is interesting at least insofar as he said his favourite album was "the queen is dead" by the smiths and he then went on to say the monarchy should be stripped of some of its powers, which is a pretty strong thing to say for a conservative

oh and i'm not going to read all of this right now, so would someone mind just telling me how we went from abu ghraib to david cameron?

Well to be fair, things were kinda different then - I mean look how much they were in power. I just think what passes for liberal now probably meant something very different back then, so it might not be accurate to compare them, y'know?

Also I think it was my fault that we digressed, but I forget why. Oh wait I mentioned Question Time

i dont think it necessarily does go to the guys credibility at all. theres no reason to assume he actively lied. the error that did occur could have very well be in good faith. it would be much more reasonable to assume that given the circumstance (his deformed hand). deviousj covers this well in his post, check it out

we dont know that he got tortured? you realize this guy was in abu ghraib right, not some other prison that hasnt had its barbaric practices revealed yet? even were we to ignore the other evidence (like, you know, the fact that he readily appears in other photographs from the whole toture scandal), i think that with common sense alone one would be justified in assuming that he was. it would take a real stretch to assume he, in the same cellblock as all of the rest during the same period, was somehow magically spared the treatment delivered to everyone else

this guy apart, do you think that hooded guy qualifies a symbol for those tortured at abu ghraib? y/n question

id address that other paragraph but its all founded on the assumption that he deliberately and knowingly lied about that photo and that there is nothing else to go on but his word, both of which i dont at all accept to be the case

no i dont accept that either. there is nothing wrong with getting behind evidence that appears to be true. (i didnt, just to be clear, but im talking in principle). and theres nothing with abandoning it when its proven false. and theres nothing wrong with maintaining your claim on something despite that one false piece of evidence. it might look bad, there might be mud on some faces, and it might be in poor form, but theres nothing wrong with it on any deeper level. you act like people are contradicting themselves on the matter, which isnt true. thatd only be true if, like i said, the entire scope of someones claim was encapsulated in that one piece of evidence and that they, after having that evidence proved false, immediately changed position and carried on like nothing happened. in that case then, yes, that claim would get thrown out with the evidence

what case doesnt need evidence to make it? i know what youre insinuating -- that there was no real evidence, no ground, for the claim in the first place and there was a need to find facts to support the argument or whatever and that the argument was arrived at a priori -- but i dont even think you buy that. lets not forget the climate at the time. everyone knew (cut the shit, you know it too) that bush got preferential treatment back then, but there was always a thick layer of obscurity and plausible deniability to the affair that rendered any action on the it difficult, and there was a palpable hunger for just something you could finally pin them with. nothing wrong with any of this

thats pretty, but it doesnt stand up the reality of the event, namely for the above stated reason of him not necessarily doing what he did in bad faith and that his claims are the sole piece of evidence that he was tortured there. if he did do it in bad faith, if he actively deceived people, then, sure, that calls into question anything else he says

of course, but it's still the same party and it's important to look at how they tried to stay politically relevant. if you compared the labour election manifesto for the 1983 election to the new labour agenda you wouldn't think it was the same party either, but the approach they took in 1983 proved to be so unpopular that they had to change.

interesting. the clip i watched had a few people mention electoral reform. how much is that on the agenda? i noticed it too when i retrieved those stats (i retrieved the election results, if you didnt read that far) that they won 22% of the popular vote and like 10% of the seats. this isnt exactly earth shattering considering we also have the same "first past the post" system (not sure what you guys call it) and im used to it, but it does appear fucked up on paper at least. i dont know too much about different systems so i cant realyl comment

would you vote liberal democrat if you could vote in the UK? in the last election, who would you have voted for?

hey you know its funny that were back here discussing the UK again like a year later, mostly so because i bought guns, germs and steel recently and am just now going to start to read it (if all goes according to plan). ill let you know what i thinkof it

i probably would've voted lib dem, yes. maybe i would've donated a couple of quid too for charles kennedy to buy a few drinks with.
hope you like the jared diamond. i have to buy his new book.

i assume charles kennedy was that drunk guy

i saw you emails, ill reply to them later tonight or tomorrow. ive spent like the whole fucking day on here, im pooped. deviousj lured me in

But there is reason to assume that the guy's accounting of things may not be totally on the level. I don't really think he was lying, but he did give some inaccurate information. Do you not think that greater scrutiny of his claims would have taken care of that? Its not as though this one photo was the only thing that he was a little off on either. He's given identifications of several of the detainees in the photos that haven't matched any of the records. I'm just wondering if any of this even gets you to raise an eyebrow and step back and say "Hey, maybe I shouldn't blindly believe everything this guy says...especially on the important things." I mean, as it is, you're stuck with "reasonable assumptions" that the guy's mistakes were made in good faith. Why not just cut the rope on this guy's account until more can be substantiated? There's all sorts of other Abu Ghraib evidence, so its not like this guy's account is the lynchpin here. Clinging to such an account despite the questions surrounding it is just the thing I was talking about when I first jumped in this thread.

Note to self: "Common sense" is okay to use in arguments now. That's funny, you guys always bitch me out when I use it...

But to the point, I haven't seen anything anywhere that says this guy was in any of the other torture pictures, so I'd appreciate a link to that. But short of that, I don't think common sense dictates that just because you were in a prison that absused some prisoners that you were abused. There were thousands of prisoners in the prison, so just saying "I was in Abu Ghraib" isn't enough to get you to "I was tortured."

I suppose.

Why not? This is what I'm talking about. Why default to the notion that he's telling the truth? There are inconsistencies in his story all over the place, and some that can't be explained away with good faith. He says he was shocked when he was supposedly hooked up to the wires, but the soldiers say they didn't hook the wires up to power (ie. they just wanted the detainees to think they could be shocked). One is true, one is not. The evidence doesn't point either way. Do you accept the guy's word unequivocally? Or do you think twice about it? Its not like the other side is all that believable either, but in that case why come down on a side?

That's not what I'm insinuating at all. I'm just saying that once you say that a certain piece of evidence has conclusively proven your case, you're letting on that your case was not conclusively proven before that piece of evidence came along. It lets on that you weren't all that confident in the evidence you had, so it looks weak when that new evidence gets thrown out and you're back to square one saying that the evidence still conclusively supports what you were contending, and had supported it all along. Maybe the evidence was good before, but in that case why tout the smoking gun?

So, if a lawyer puts on a lying witness in good faith, then you have no reason to wonder whether or not the rest of the case might be made up of other "good faith" mistakes? You'd be a trial lawyer's dream juror.

in all honesty i dont even know what it is were even discussing anymore. let me recap or soemthing because i dont know what im trying to prove at this point:

this began with my saying that the error was inconsequential. thats what you took issue with, correct? inconsequential in what? within the grand scheme of the article. the article was looking at this guy who was tortured at abu ghraib and his story. i say its inconsequential because it doesnt in itself discredit the story (the fundamental aspects of the story that the whole issue pivots on, namely his being an abused prisoner at the infamous abu ghraib) as it would have to to have merited the reaction it did. it doesnt discredit the story because it doesnt present any positive evidence of bad faith on his part. it could, yes, but it doesnt in itself. even if it was in bad faith that would only call into question the rest of his account, not necessarily automatically discredit it. you point to it and say that he lied (or just otherwise ended giving the truth, however that was done) and thus cant be trusted and that, therefore, the entire article is indeed called into question and the reaction to it is then merited. do you agree so far? my disagreement has been that i dont think you can necessarily point to the image thing as evidence against his credibility. dont read into that and think that im saying hes a saint and everything hes saying is 100% true, because im not, i just dont see any reason to disbelieve him and a bunch of reasons to tip the scale from neutrality to believing him. again, not absolutely, but that isnt the point. the image could have been good faith and he was indeed a prisoner there (ill get to the image thing in a second). i, yes, cant claim absolutely that he was tortured, but you certainly couldnt claim that he wasnt (there must be some kind of record of this thing, of who was there during that period and part of abuse scandal, and i know he and other prisoners are suing the US but i cant find the results of that online (think its still ongoing)). so this does partly come down to his credibility on other matters and this is where these other things brought up come in:

i saw that part in the above linked to article where hes looking at photographs and mentions "oh theres ahmed, his brother and i were friends.." and whatever, but where are you getting this information from that says those were false? im unaware of such a thing

and

i cant link you to the article because its on the "timeselect" part of the new york times website but i have the article saved and here are the excerpts where this is mentioned (i can post the whole article if you want to learn more about this thing, its really good and isnt too long. the article was a kind of overview of the what happened (with the error) and why)

and this one other line

theres also this bit at the end that goes over his credibility, but i cant find other stuff online about it (havent really looked to hard to be honest, im tired):

there are other individual things you said that i take issue with, just in themselves. but im not going to touch them because im kind of learning from past mistakes and am going to try to keep this on the root issues and not let it just flower into this huge huge thing were there are all these side arguments like "but you said xyz here" and then you answer "aha, but it was more like yzx you see, because of this things i said 2 pages earlier..." and so on, while the actual core of the topic remains unaddressed





yeah, and? the case wasnt conclusively proven then. it was exactly at the point where it was in want of that conclusive piece of evidence that would put it all to rest. i mean if it was conclusively proven we wouldnt even need any more evidence of anything at all. this isnt just semantics either, the idea youre expressing is just really wobbly

i agree with what your suggesting, which is that the lawyer (CBS or the times) are to be held responsible for who they present. like a lawyer couldnt just have some crackhead dude come in who says he was raped by bush or whatever and then, sincerely believing him, present his accounts to the court and be himself immune from the fallout. but to advance from this and then say that the lawyer cant be trusted or that it calls other things into question isnt so foregone a conclusion i think. in that instance, yeah definitely, because thats so egregious a fuck up that nothing would ever serve to mitigate it enough, but with anything else this is where the nature of the exact incident and other information factor in. so its not just about, in principle, a lawyer putting on a lying witness in good faith and then having no reason to wonder whether or not the rst of the case might be made up of other good faith mistakes. the answer, i think, is "it depends." and it really does

corganist, let me ask you a serious question for a moment: are you and i friends?

This may just be a matter of semantics (surprise, surprise!). Basically my main point of contention on this issue is not that you believe the gentleman's story despite the fact he wasn't in the picture. I think that's perfectly reasonable. My main point of contention has been the fact that while the right wing blogs gave way too much weight to the guy's mistake, I thought you gave it way too little in very much the same way by calling it "inconsequential". I think it is consequential. It matters that this guy has been going around giving out mistaken information. The question is, how much does it matter? My thought is that its somewhere between the position of the right wing blogs and your position. Its not extremely damaging to his entire story, but on the other hand its not something to be totally blown off either. I agree with you that the reaction to the Times' mistake by the blogs was overblown, but that doesn't mean that underblowing things is the answer.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/20...torture_photo/

It was in that article, which I believe was the first one to point out the mistakes surrounding this guy.

It just seems to me like there's a tendency for some to treat the "old" state of affairs as being somehow stronger than it was after the bad evidence is found out. Almost as though they're saying "See? You believed our claims with that false evidence...so now that you know what we claim is plausible, you should find the old evidence more believable now!" But in reality, nothing has changed about that old evidence...and if anything people will be less likely to believe it than they would have been before.

I like to think so. I don't think I would waste so much time typing out these drawn out posts otherwise. If we weren't friends, I think it'd be much easier just to resort to a couple four letter words and call it a day. :)

That's pretty sick

No-one's saying 'this guy is clearly telling the absolute truth HELL YEAH', but the point is there isn't really a lot to come down on him for. He's saying he was photographed in that position, abused etc - this isn't some shocking new revelation. By now everyone's painfully aware of what went on there, and he's recounting his personal experiences in that place. You know that prisoners there will have their own stories, and this is potentially one of them - and he's kind of a symbol for those people, like that one photograph is. I don't get why you think this guy is so important that he must be silenced until it can be absolutely proven that his story checks out.

Don't you think it's a little hypocritical that you're saying he's 'off' on a few things just because the military says so? I mean if you want to talk about proven lies and concealment with a strong motivation for continuing it, those guys are a good place to start looking. I'm not saying I automatically believe anyone who disagrees with a military account here, but they really don't have a lot of credibility here, and in this situation I'm more likely to listen to what this dude has to say. No-one's 'clinging' to his account, I really don't get why you're so offended by it

i think its potentially consequential, but not necessarily in itself. how you decide i think is with other information.

but, fine, im willing to accept that i maybe underblew (wtf kind of word is that) things. i obviously didnt consider in depth all aspects of it to the extent that we are now when i first posted about it being inconsequential, but i dont necessarily think that kind of treatment is prerequisite to making such claims. im to be held accountable, sure, but i doubt you also had studied this to the extent you did when you posted about how it wasnt inconsequential. but personally i have more than just a little faith in the veracity of the times, and i know that, when they arent correct, that they will have a full accounting for -- like their ombudsman just did yesterday, actually, in a pretty interesting piece. (oops, another landmine word with you, "faith." you know what i meant). this doesnt all just boil down to an obedient trust in the paper, because there are claims and issues that exist outside of that, but i really think we would have to operate from the premise that the times is rag to have some of the arguments from the bloggers or elsewhere be justified


thats interesting and certainly factors into things, but isnt too conclusive. the article itself says that these people couldve went by nicknames or other names around each other. it sounds like im grasping at straws but im also, like deviousj said, having a hard time accepting the army's word as absolute. i mean (this might sound ironic citing another army report in my claim that army reports arent to be trusted, but just to illustrate the fallibility of them) this was (a summarized version) of the big investigation that was launched right after the scandal broke:

heres the report if youre curious http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/US_Arm...soners_in_Iraq


but these are all just arguments on form. like youre saying how people flopped about was just in poor taste, and i agreed with that, but it doesnt really go much deeper than that. but, yeah, sure it was ugly. the whole thing was unfortunate for a million reasons



but that isnt your style though. youre too much a up-at-6, starchy, old-school conservative to tell me to eat cock or whatever. but also, friends dont let friends vote republican, so unfortunately, being friends, you have to vote green next election. sorry, rules of the game
ok so were friends now. but, i have to say, your evidence for that is flawed, corganist. if willingness to make drawn out posts with is the criteria for friendship than youre friends with a lot of awful trolls. this speaks to your own ability, or lack of, to judiciously pick friends, and devalues our own friendship. therefore, dialectically, we simply cannot be friends. so this is just another fallacy from you. really, is there any thing you WONT say?

i didnt even notice that. wow. thats worth writing down. what incredibly cynicism. i bet the guy like burst out laughing afterwards, if he could even hold it in that long




so you jealous now, eh? corganist and i are friends. sorry man, i claimed him first. get your own sophist. dont touch him, hes mine! i payed good money for this little creature and i intend to put him to the fields poste haste