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[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
I give you far too much power this way, but I read virtually everything you ever link to here. In fact, I have often (==45%?) read it before I see your link. I read WAY too much. I live via the conference call (which, frankly, beats the hell out of work) and have always been a multi-tasker.

If I don't say anything about my sideline as a nuclear physicist, then none of us knows about it, right? I wasn't insinuating that you weren't well read -- I was observing that you were complaining that I was "automatically" calling someone a liar without acknowledging that I was linking to several sources supporting that view.

This sort of clears up something for me - why would you be pushing this? Why would you care? Why would Drum care? I get it, now. It's not the issue of, did azner lie. It's, did the Spanish really wimp out badly and vote themselves out of the war out of fear.

This has been the point all along. I have no feelings for or against Aznar and the PP. What struck me as odd all week was the idea that Spaniards would respond to terrorist bombings on the eve of elections by turning on their leaders. This reminds of a how both sides in WWII thought the others' civilians would react to aerial bombing. We expected the Germans to give up under the pressure, when in fact they pulled together. They thought the same of the British. I just find it very hard to believe that Spain got bombed and reacted by saying, enough, we give up. Especially given their longer experience with terrorism. The suggestion that the vote was a reaction to the government's handling of the situation is much more plausible to me.

You guys don't want that to be - it makes an antiwar choice seem dishonorably and cravenly arrived at - so you need a new focus.

One could say, you guys really want the story to be about Spanish appeasement. Why do you want the story to be an Al Qaeda victory so badly? It would be a little too simple to suggest that this feeds the major theme of President Bush's re-election campaign, so I'm more inclined to think that it's a tendency to project our own obsessions onto a more complicated world.

The main public accusations of that came post-vote.

Not by what I linked to.

But, for that, to support that spin, you dishonor him and call him a liar? Cheap.

I've already said that I don't know enough to call him a liar, but you just keep on beating that horse. The interesting question to me is whether the Spanish people thought the PP was misleading them. It would appear that the answer is yes. And, according to the Financial Times, so did German intelligence.

First, I read CalBaby prior to your post. (I was amazed when he got hired, only because it's the start of the end of the blogging - they're joining the hive, they're becoming the Establishment - wow.) I cited Drum's bolded headline and following sentence that said, basically, "now that we've proven that the craven Avnar lied, . . .". What crap. What partisan, unsupported crap, designed (now that I see this) to keep supporting what he wants people to think in the overall antiwar picture. You, as a lawyer, accepted his claim of "proof"? I have more respect for someone who tells an untruth out of ignorance than for someone who lies to bring people to an unsupportable position. He cited half of the evidence - "his" half - to support the "lie" BS. "Whore" comes to mind . . .

Because I think he did just that. Ever seen me come here and cite a blog that spun and then drew the "best" possible conclusions from the spin? Nope. I cite news and then draw my own conclusions, or I post cartoons. Neither represents any attempt to convince anyone that "we've already settled this point, so let's move on . . .". That's pandering. That's bull. Either respect your audience and nevermore say "we've already established that . . . ", or stick with cartoons.

But frequently, loudly, repetitively, unsupportably, one-sidedly, . . .

Honestly, WTF are you talking about? Drum was obviously referring to other posts and accounts -- plainly, it's an aside to the post. I've seen plenty supporting his view in the last week. If you think he's wrong on the facts, fine, but here you go, leaping to the conclusion that he's lying.

eta: You seem to think I cited Drum as proof for the proposition that Aznar lied. I linked to that post because it contained the bit from the Financial Times that I quoted. Nothing in my post referenced or relied on what Drum said about it -- and yet here you are having a tizzy fit because of a few words at the start of his post. Really, get a grip.