A discussion about British Journalist John Cantlie deserves its own thread instead of getting lost in an argument interventionism and Islamic Terrorism. In a new tape released by ISIS, British journalist John Cantlie was recorded criticizing Western Media and Middle East intervention, apparently on his own accord. Is the West systematically misled about ISIS? Is Cantlie a traitor? Is the British Government at-fault here? What do you think the subsequent tapes will claim or reveal?
Read the book "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" by Cialdini if you want to understand what's going on here. He was a hostage, nothing he said was voluntary.
Dude, I don't know, they look pretty happy in that film. I mean, they got to play Solitaire, how sweet is that? _
See, now THAT one was total bullshit. Way too much scoring and excitement. The Nazi's should have quit with solitaire. _
Three guys got their heads cut off and the fourth guy is supporting his captors. Do you really read anything else into this? The question isn't whether we should be watching and believing tapes made by ISIS. Clearly there is nothing to be gained there. The question is whether we should be watching and believing tapes made by the western media and other interest groups trying to foment a war frenzy around the civil war raging in the Syrian desert right now. Saddam Hussein has WMD's and he's getting ready to use them on us!
Saddam Hussein fully admitted he had chemical weapons and he'd threaten to use them. Everyone always seems to forget that. ISIS is, without a doubt, a terrorist organization committing genocide. Nothing a hostage says under the constant threat of death should be believed. If something is done to stop them in the Middle East, they will quickly come over to the Western countries and start waging war there. Hell, Australia just put a stop to an attempt to commit a public beheading of a random Aussie. It's already happening.
No ones gonna do shit about ISIS until they bring the drama here, then people will demand their removal.
This has nothing to do with anything We were manipulated into a decade long 3 trillion dollar war by a bunch of hypocritical scumbags intent on feeding their friends huge contracts while they stomped all over the Middle East Cowboy style. They didn't even have the good grace to try to sell their lie by planting WMD's after the fact. They were looking to accomplish three things in the process: 1. Remove Saddam Hussein who had turned on them after he was installed by the West to manage the process of giving Iraqi oil away for next to nothing and instead become a bloody heavy-handed populist in the style of Tito. 2. Hand out big contracts to defense firms and give huge concessions to American and Western Big Oil. 3. Sow distrust in the workings of the US government and destabilize it in the process. They succeeded in all 3 endeavors. Saddam turned on us when he rolled into Kuwait and had the temerity to assure the first Bush administration that if we let him get away with that he'd sell us $10 a barrel oil for generations. That was too blatant for us and we couldn't have continued to maintain the deception that we were neutral observers just interested in commerce if we let it stand. When Saddam refused to leave we did what all bosses do when the underling rebels. We stomped on him. I'd be a lot more willing to believe the above if the US hadn't just turned our backs or made loud bleating noises in the documented genocides that have occurred repeatedly since the late 70's. BTW, Saddam didn't admit he had chemical weapons and threaten to use them. He displayed them AND used them in the mid to late 80's against Iran, the Kurds and the Shiite Marsh Arabs, causing hundreds of thousands of documented casualties. He was our pawn at the time and so we, of course, pooh-pooh'd the acts but let him continue doing them. This is because we are by nature a highly hypocritical empire in the late stages of dissolution and we're very much in the ends justify the means stages that always occur just before the empire falls. We're debasing the currency also and going three for three on the road to perdition by prosecuting people who work within the system who speak out against our hypocritical abuses and violations of our own well-founded laws and protections.
And now "we" are being manipulated into a war with Syria so that scumbags can once again feed their friends with huge contracts.
I don't think it's going to happen. I think the stakes in 2016 are too high for another open-ended commitment. Nobody in the establishment wants Rand Paul elected and that's what they are going to accomplish if they keep beating the war drums and actually manage to pull off a half-assed US intervention in a civil war in the desert. The establishment learned it's lesson in 2008 when it's favored candidate Hillary Clinton got beat by a black guy with big ears and a funny name. They're not going to go double or nothing on 2016. The Republicans have been destroyed as a brand by the shenanigans of the early 00's. The Neo-con establishment still wields a lot of power behind the scenes but they have been driven from the national political conversation by Obama and the Tea Party. Hillary is closer to the Neo-cons than she is to either of the other two groups in terms of her policy choices. She's the Neo-cons last hope. "Help me Hillary Clinton-Kenobi, you're my only hope."
Blahblah with your partisan nonsense, I am talking about the US government which has two parties that criticize each other but also emulate each other. Nobody said this war is going to happen tomorrow. I'm guessing it happens after that Clinton dyke gets elected. And after she and her cabinet do everything they can to fuck things up and are vilified into oblivion, we're on to George P. Bush. The antichrist
