freecounterpoint: Botched Joke

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Botched Joke

15 comments:

Anonymous said...: waste: 1. to consume, spend, or employ uselessly or without adequate return; use to no avail or profit; squander

i'd say he was right on the money, unless one of you sees the adequate return.; 2/13/2007 3:02 PM
Anonymous said...: yes. he's learning to be a good politico. but by the dictionary definition, his initial statement was correct.; 2/13/2007 3:23 PM
Mr roT said...: Disputable doubly. First, good politicos don't blow it the first time. Cf. John Kerry's perfect example of politico ineptitude (he's in the congress because Massachusetts is a one-party state).
Secondly, it won't be clear for a while whether these soldiers' lives were wasted. We have to see whether Hillary or Obama goes in and undoes any good that deposing Saddam has done.; 2/13/2007 3:36 PM
Mr roT said...: Here's Taranto:

A Waste Is a Terrible Thing to Mind
On Sunday Sen. Barack Obama, speaking at Iowa State University, made this jaw-dropping statement:

We ended up launching a war that should have never been authorized, and should have never been waged, and to which we now have spent $400 billion, and have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted.

Wasted! Hard to believe anyone would say such a thing, but there it is on video.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports Obama quickly fired up the nuance machine:

Obama, in an interview with the Des Moines Register right afterward, told the paper, ''I was actually upset with myself when I said that, because I never use that term,'' he said. ''Their sacrifices are never wasted. . . . What I meant to say was those sacrifices have not been honored by the same attention to strategy, diplomacy and honesty on the part of civilian leadership that would give them a clear mission."

Aha, so this is what he meant to say:

We ended up launching a war that should have never been authorized, and should have never been waged, and to which we now have spent $400 billion, and have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans that have not been honored by the same attention to strategy, diplomacy and honesty on the part of civilian leadership that would give them a clear mission.

But instead of those last 27 words (which don't entirely make sense--e.g., "the same attention" as what?), what came out of his mouth was "wasted." Just a wee slip of the tongue!

The Sun-Times notes that Obama is sorry you took what he said the wrong way, which is to say, the way he actually said it:

By Monday, reporters covering Obama making his first visit as a presidential candidate in New Hampshire, asked Obama, campaigning in a Nashua home, if military families deserved an apology.

"Well as I said, it is not at all what I intended to say, and I would absolutely apologize if any of them felt that in some ways it had diminished the enormous courage and sacrifice that they'd shown. You know, and if you look at all the other speeches that I've made, that is always the starting point in my view of this war.''

It's almost enough to make you doubt Joe Biden's oratorical standards.; 2/13/2007 3:40 PM
Anonymous said...: You are right that we don't know whether, in the end, this will prove to have been a worthy effort or not. But as of today's date - it has been pretty much a waste mitigated with occasional successes like the killing of the bros & the capture of saddam.
As far as what will happen in the future, I don't buy the speculation that, if the us pulls out, all hell will break loose: it's not like it isn't already there. I am not sure what you mean by undoing the "good" that's been done. Think Hill will resurrect the bros ?; 2/13/2007 4:38 PM
Tecumseh said...: Of course, Lefties always think giving one's life in defense of Liberty and Freedom is a waste -- nothing to do with the particulars of any conflict, it's just by definition. So obviously this is not a slip of the tongue -- birds of same feather all think the same.; 2/13/2007 5:09 PM
Mr roT said...: Interesting observations and good smartass question. No, Hillary is too far from the good Lord to attempt any resurrections. Even with my dick, she would have a lot of trouble that Segolene Royal simply not have. But, as Dostoyevsky would say, that's another story.
I do think that things in Iraq could get a lot worse than they are now, though I do agree with you that they are plenty bad now. The reason they are as bad as they are now is that up till now the borders with Syria and Iran (as well as Saudi, but that's a sacred cow) are open.
Let's look a bit at history. When we got out of VietNam all hell broke loose and underground commies came above ground and proceeded to kill 30% of the population in Cambodia, exterminate and reeducate countless others in VietNam proper, and cause the mass exodus of the boat people which likely took hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese lives. On the plus side, our putting up a bit of a fight there (that in battles the communists never won a single time) may have saved Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand,... from communist takeover.

When Yugoslavia fell apart, all hell broke loose. They lost their Tito-Saddam and proceeded to kill each other in religious-ethnic wars that continue to simmer to this day. The Sunnis, er, Serbs and their proxies extgerminated people wholesale under the watchful and impotent eyes of the United Nations.

I trust more than the mullahs nextdoor to Iraq.; 2/13/2007 5:15 PM
Mr roT said...: Sorry my engrish. Some have way with words. Others not have way.; 2/13/2007 5:17 PM
Mr roT said...: AI, Tacitly I agree with you. Thus the title of this post. Of course they think that, Obama and Kerry.; 2/13/2007 5:18 PM
Tecumseh said...: al Zawahri chimes in with his 2 cents. Gotta say, he has more humor than your random birkenstocker, though they all say basically the same thing.; 2/13/2007 6:21 PM
Mr roT said...: Taranto had mentioned and commented on Zawa today. He missed on saying,"But Zawahiri supports the troops!"; 2/13/2007 6:33 PM
Tecumseh said...: Are you trying to compete with Taranto?; 2/13/2007 7:47 PM
Anonymous said...: giving one's life in defense of Liberty and Freedom is a waste
Both Fraydom and lib'ty ? Oh my! Are you my knight in shinin' armor ? I need someone to catch the toothfairy who forgot to put a dollar under my pillow last night.; 2/14/2007 10:44 AM
Arelcao Akleos said...: If anyone would know his Fairies, it would be the toothless Anonymous; 2/14/2007 4:52 PM
Anonymous said...: My poor aa it's pitiful how you got your concepts all fucked up. toothless i am: although i do believe you all are a bunch of nutcases that belong in mental institutions (straighjackets, padded walls and all) rather than in academia, I certainly wish you no harm!; 2/14/2007 11:02 PM

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