Should we attempt to be friends with a country that has a president who publicly hates America and everything it stands for? Will that solve our problem? Is there anything we can do (other than give them money, which we know doesn’t work) to make Iran and other America-hating countries want to coexist with us?

Could we have prevented 9/11? If so, how? Can we prevent another 9/11 or worse? If so, how should we go about doing so? Should we set aside our differences with Iran and let them do whatever it is they plan on doing and hope for the best? Should we “wait” and stay on the defensive?

Is it worth a few thousand people to see if they “really” are going to attack anyone? Or is it worth a few thousand people to attack them? Seems either way we’re damned if we do and possibly damned if we don’t. [Fool me once (9/11) shame on you, fool me twice shame on me].

With the appeasement of the left and the war mongering of the right, is there a soulution? Has there ever been peace without war? These are serious questions. The right wants war (Do they really?) and the left wants to appease (Is that true?).

Why, then, would a blog owner wanting to make a case against Iran open him/herself to having every opinion or linked story viewed with skepticism?

I think there may be a basic misconception at work here. Justin H at RightontheRight.com, Cao, and other hyper-rightists are entirely uninterested in any sort of fact-based discussion. Witness Cao’s refusal to read the summary of the recently-passed Iranian law, or find a translation of the original bill. Witness her attempt to brand me a Holocaust denier without the slightest evidence to back up her smear.

Cao and her ilk are spreading propaganda that will support their efforts to drive the US into a war against Iran. Propaganda need not be based in fact; it is far more effective if it is based on emotion. That is why the front page of the National Post on May 19 displayed a huge photo of two Jews in Budapest wearing yellow stars on their coats. The whole point of the exercise was to link Iran to the Holocaust on an emotional level, in an attempt to shut down all fact-based discussion of the rationale for war.

Facts do not matter to war-lovers like Cao and her kind. Only the spread of hatred and fear matter to them. There are those who are easily swayed by such tactics, and facts will never reach them. But that does not mean that the facts should be ignored. The best response I can think of to fearmongers like Cao is to point out the disconnect between their hysterics and the facts.

Wouldn’t the update be Valerie’s $2.5 mil last laugh?

Why, then, would a blog owner wanting to make a case against Iran open him/herself to having every opinion or linked story viewed with skepticism? Why not admit to jumping the gun, to saying that no matter what other untruths are out there, s/he is not going to defend (by argument or silence) this particular untruth?

My uncle would wish that the story were true, but at least he would admit that it was not.

And should it come true in the future? It still doesn’t make the current story the truth. That would be like the passenger in the car claiming that he’d precisely timed the traffic light change after he’d said “Now…..Now…....Now…..Now. See? I called it!”

(I hope RealTeen will go back and provide an update link to his retraction. I believe he has it in him.)

Suddenly realized your source has issued a retraction, huh?

And now you’re desperate to change the subject with another ad hominem attack, eh?

Protect that ignorance, Cao. It’s all that stands between you and the real world.

And uh…need I remind you that Iran’s current leadership consists of anti-American and anti-Israel lunatics who realistically should be viewed as EXTREMELY DANGEROUS LIARS?

And you fall back — again — on a nebulous, non-specific accusation. What specific lies is Iran’s leadership telling the world, in the present case of the alleged religious-badge law?

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a former member of Iran’s secret police and publicly denies the Holocaust.

Just like some of his American contemporaries. (e.g., Joseph Massad, or Hamid Dabashi, or Nicholas Dirks, Jean Howard, Farah Jasmine Griffin, et al.) who speak the language of Palestinian suicide bombers.

Are you one of those, meatball?

Are you a holocaust denier?

Are you one of those people who says Israel has no right to exist and supports the the children and young men of the stones and Molotov cocktails?

Even putting all that stuff aside about the media’s truthtelling, you have to admit that anything that comes out of Ahmadinejad’s mouth or his mouthpieces (e.g., the government he is now running) should be subject to question.

Why is it that you people don’t seem to acknowledge that the terrorists we’re fighting think that war = deception? And believe everything they say as though it’s the truth?

Are you really that stupid?

Guess so, that’s why I have such difficulty mustering the wherewithal to come over here and debate you. You have no coherent talking points; it’s all regurgitated pablum from other places that I’ve already heard before. Quite frankly, meatball, it’s BORING!

Come up with something new. Puhleez.

Sláinte, Cao

But what is the text of the actual law in question?

Did you read the summary of the bill that I linked to?

No?

Did you bother to ask a native Arabic speaker to translate the original text of the bill for you?

No?

It’s obviously very important to you to protect your ignorance at all costs.

The Iranian law in question would reportedly mean that 25,000 Jews would have to sew a yellow strip of cloth on the front of their clothes, while Christians would be required to wear red badges. Zoroastrians would have to wear a blue cloth, Canada’s National Post reported.

Tell me something, Cao. Can you find that original story on the National Post site now?

No? Why not?

Have you bothered to read the National Post’s retraction?

No? Why not?

I know why. You have to protect your ignorance.

But what is the text of the actual law in question?

Is it that Christians and Jews must wear different colored clothing so that Islamists don’t defile themselves by touching them by accident?

That is my question. Because if that’s the text of the legislation, then…this word game you’re playing us a dangerous one and very misleading.

The Iranian law in question would reportedly mean that 25,000 Jews would have to sew a yellow strip of cloth on the front of their clothes, while Christians would be required to wear red badges. Zoroastrians would have to wear a blue cloth, Canada’s National Post reported.

The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations said it was “deeply disturbed by reports indicating that the Iranian Parliament (Majlis) may be in the process of adopting” the law.

“While such legislation would be reminiscent of dark periods in the past, like the Nazi era when Jews and others had to wear identifying badges, it is also consistent with the racist and extremist ideology propagated by President Ahmadinejad,” the Conference of Presidents stated.

“This is part of legislation, originally introduced in 2004 but blocked within the Majlis, mandating that Iranians wear standard Islamic garments. We have been seeking to clarify these reports but do not yet have confirmation,” the Conference of Presidents stated, adding that Iran could be working on such uniforms to be introduced in the fall.

“We are monitoring the situation and seeking to ascertain the facts in order to determine the appropriate response. The initial reports have aroused concern in many governmental and non-governmental circles. We are confident that the facts will be clear soon and we will comment further at that time,” the Conference of Presidents concluded.

You expect that CBS and all the others you listed there are telling the truth? This defies reason….which again has me wondering about your cognitive reasoning skills in addition to such problems as perseveration and echlalia. You just keep repeating the same memes without sufficient evidence to back it up!

The majority of the media in America is overwhelmingly biased to the left and they distort the “news” and the “facts” that American see every single day, and we have to sift through that garbage if we’re going to get down to the real story.

*The New York Times has not endorsed a single Republican presidential candidate since Dwight Eisenhower in the ‘50’s.

*On the major networks, conservatives fill slots as the “token” conservative commentators on Sunday morning talk shows, but liberals are hired as anchors and hosts to deliver hard, “objective” news.

*As none other than the Bostn Globe explained, 2005 “was a year of good-byes-some noble, some less so-as journalism’s old guard departed from the spotlight. And it was a year when some of media’s biggest institutions started thinking, in earnest, about reinvention.” Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, Ted Koppel and Tom Brokaw are all gone now, with Rather booted from the air thanks to Rathergate. Even New YorkTimes reporter Judith Miller was forced to resign to dislose her source in the Valerie Plame affair (though MIller obviously got the last laugh with her reported million-dollar book advance).

*The United States is fighting a war in Iraq and elsewhere against terrorists who want Western Civilization destroyed. Terrorists perpetrated 9/11, slaughtered innocents, and beheaded American Nick Berg on video. yet the mainstream media can’t run enough stories against America’s war in Iraq. June 29, 2004, the New York Times ran more than fifty front-page news stories about American soldiers “mistreating” Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. By contrast, the Chicago Tribune, no bastion of conservative thought, twenty-eight. Why did the NYT feel the need to go overoard about a few bad apple soldiers in an American military force of over two million?

*Of the 1,388 stories on the Iraq war aired on the evening news programs of ABC, CBS and NBS during the first nine months of 2005, 61 percent of the stories were negative or pessimistic, whil only 15 percent of the stories were positive or optimistic.

*Mainstream media giants such as the NYT, the Boston Globe and Knight Ridder are LAYING OFF employees.

*Eighty-nine percent of the Washington bureau chiefs and reporteers voted for Bill Clinton in 1992 while only 7 percent voted for Bush.

*A study tracking for two years in the late 2990s showed how the media reports on gun issues. The study found that of the 653 gun-policy stories broadcast, 357 stories tilted in favor of gun control while a mere thirty-six tilted AGAINST gun control. That’s an anti-gun bias of 10-1.

I don’t need to go on, the point’s been made and you cranks are off your rockers by nit picking at stuff like this.

Get a life.

Sláinte, Cao

Or is all of this going COMPLETELY over your little head, kender?

He took me off his mailing list when I replied to his fourth with a debunking link and the message that I was thinking of starting a blog called “Easily Debunked Equals Lying.” He still mails such things to my mother, though, since she simply deletes them without challenge.

RealTeen, unfortunately, is amassing quite a record of ignoring his previous wrong posts and editing/deleting comments while claiming lack of moderation or spam-clearing mistakes. His youth makes this behavior more disturbing to me. As I look at the current circumstances of former College Republicans, I wonder if the newest crop is a field of such weeds.

I won’t hold my breath waiting for the hundreds of retractions their readers deserve.