An excerpt:
Cases like this are the very height of stupidity, the epitome of political correctness run amok. The type of thinking that permits this sort of thing boggles the mind.
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44 comments:
Note how "not seen since 1944" is repeated as mantra by friend and foe alike. And "a kayaker" is getting the blame/credit for this fiasco.
I fear that CLO has lost the debate on this one. It seems that we can all argue till we are blue-in-the-face over the video but the public zooms right into the self-evident facts, no photo equals no evidence. To them, god bless'um, it's just that simple.
Reminds me of that recent book, The Wisdom of Crowds.
Humans! Why do you consider the sighting of one of your gods on a tortilla chip as good. But a glimpse in a swamp of your Lord God Bird as open to such controversy?
For our Gods we move whole rivers, not just stop pumping projects. And we offer them great poems,
Yip nosh op begot
Tip top mo hobglot
Mo shrimp curley tot
ho ho gnarley bot
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahah
Kneep........kneep.....
Well certainly you can drain all the swamps or change the course of all rivers to benefit farmers.
Yet I miss every extinct species.
The earth loses forest the size of Austria every year. The author wants to imply that saving forest, and diversity, past or present, doesn't improve survivability of humans on the planet, only slash and burn, dam and irrigate farming is in the best interests of the species. The IBWO saga has provided fodder for the "short-term is all that matters" crowd.
Hey I miss the Carolina Parakeet,
I'd still miss the snail darter but true enough, the IBWO habitat should be saved on merits other than the bird unless a crisp image presents itself. The transition to a different thinking without an unproven bird, has already begun.
(Phew)
But the Singer Tract was mowed down with the same thinking that empowers the author: What good is a single species if we need the wood to build Higgin's boats for D-Day?
Paul in New Paltz, NY
Unfortunately, this is the sort of right-wing-short-sighted-idiot ranting that will be incited by playing the IBWO card to stop "progress." Of course, anything that stops "progress" is, by definition, un-American to such fascists. But using the IBWO (instead of more general and complex ecological conservation arguments) makes it easy for these simpletons to focus their attacks. Thanks Cornell......
But using the IBWO (instead of more general and complex ecological conservation arguments) makes it easy for these simpletons to focus their attacks. Thanks Cornell......
This is spot on. Cornell has handed the "I'm for the environment unless I can make a buck wiping it out" crowd a huge, simplistic baseball bat. And it's got the scientific seal of approval. I can hear it now:
"Scientists say there's global warming, mercury problems, and that Red Knots are endangered? Sure. Just like they said the Ivory-billed Woodpecker still existed in AK!"
the IBWO habitat should be saved on merits other than the bird
No doubt.
I'm agnostic on this irrigation project without knowing all the details. But I certainly tend towards preserving as much of the natural environment as possible without compromising the health of the folks who currently live in near that environment.
The law is queer
Not at all clear
Why a red knott
Gets not squat
But a ex-bird
No longer heard
Gets some support
For a day in court
Perhaps the fault
Is we should halt
To help the Knott
Let it be shot
Then when it’s rare
A kayaker will dare
To see several
At Cape Canaveral
amid grass and mole rat
In the habitat
So salty and narrow
Of the seaside sparrow
Those farmers grow rice. It goes to Japan. Most of them can't afford the cost of the project and don't want to pay. Now if they were growing corn for ethanol that would be a different story.
P.S. I don't think scientists ever said the IWBO was in Alaska, I could be wrong though.
The kayak by itself
Newly off the shelf
Is not a killer
But with a birder
It becomes a weapon
Reducing all to carbon
Any and all who doubt
And are less than devout
A weapon of choice
To lend a loud voice
To your greatest sightings
And credence to your writings
Lesser beings
Even alie-ings
Might use a canoe
This you must eschew
It’s used by your ugly cousin
And by nerds by the dozen
To attrack Selma Hayek
Real men use a kayak
Of course, if you believed in Iraqi WMD, Iraqi underwriting of certain bad guys, and the subsequent invasion, then you are NOT anti-American.... I love the double and triple standards that are employed by these fanatics. Hmm, what goes around comes around?
By the way, hasn't Cornell publicly declared that the woodpecker(s) must be gone because they haven't been able to find it again (lately)? What judge is going to take this seriously after further review of the "evidence?" Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
Oh yeah, and.... Leslie won't come out of the closet....
Dear methinks,
can't you give us
hyperlinks?
"Of course, if you believed in Iraqi WMD..."
I want to keep this blog very tightly focused on the Ivory-bill controversy.
However, since the IBWO/WMD comparison is so common, I feel compelled to say this: in my humble opinion, that's a pretty lousy analogy.
I think the evidence for the Arkansas IBWO is extremely flimsy, while the recent evidence for Iraqi WMD is quite strong. Supporting links here and here .
You lost me there Tom. The case for WMD's in Iraq is as weak as IBWOs in Arkansas. The fact that only the likes of desperate Rick Santorum is still trying to find them and that 50% of americans believe in them is NO evidence at all. The same can probably be said for IBWOs!
Clorox in Iraq's cabinets is not WMD. Neither are Pileated's in Ark. Ivory Bills.
Gotta differ with you Tom,
The IBWO/WMD is classically similar; even you highlighted Groupthink a long time ago.
Until everybody is educated, I hate to use the progressive term "enlightened" because it is so freakin' arrogant (speaking of name calling) then people say it's Farmer's Water versus a stupid bird. Progress -- progress to what?
The continued separation of humanity from the natural world. Thank you Western Religion and Civilization. Why does it always have to be one or the other.
To sum up - The Corps builds big dams and big water irrigation projects, my agency builds small dams and small irrigation projects, that's our mandates from Congress (PORK BARREL). Spend money, create jobs, possibly ruin the environment. It would be a shame that this IBWO screw up might weaken our already weakened environmental laws.
How do you convince people that a better environment is Progress?
"Clorox in Iraq's cabinets is not WMD."
Possibly we differ because both of us haven't carefully read the sources that I linked.
Here is the key point:
"Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent."
Sarin is not Clorox.
Degraded..."Sarin is not Clorox"
Well, when it is degraded it is no more dangerous than Clorox. Sarin degrades very quickly.
I think you and I do have a disconnect. It's that I or any other thinking person always thought and still do not think they would find SOME Sarin etc. The disconnect is that some degraded Sarin somehow validates the Iraq war and this is not an analogy for the IBWO fiasco.
But that's not why we went to war. We went to war because of the imminent threat to the US of nukes and bio agents. Wasn't ever going to happen, never was.
So there you have it IBWO/WMD are so similar as to be classic examples of groupthink, wishful thinking, and stubbornness.
So if you don't mind, many of us will continue to use the WMD fiasco as analogy/metaphor for the IBWO fiasco.
Don't get us wrong. We see why you said it. We just vehemently disagree.
Dear Tom, anonymous, and Marcus-
I wrote the comment that Tom highlighted (or lowlighted?) RE Iraqi WMD. I don't believe that anyone would argue that Iraq DID NOT HAVE gas WMD during the Iraq-Iran war and leading up to Gulf War I. The question is were they actively producing new stockpiles? Has anything been found that was "new." I doubt it. Perhaps a better IBWO-Iraq analogy would be that we know there were IBWOS around up to the 1940's, but there's no hard evidence that they were around and producing new IBWOs beyond that time.
Another good analogy is how the Bushies continue to try to convince us to stay the course because we've got so much to lose if we fail in Iraq, and the only opposing view you hear about is "cut and run." But there's almost zero media attention to all the people who didn't want to go in in the first place. Very similar to the IBWO situation, where many of us didn't believe from day 1 of the public announcement and would have been opposed to the whole thing if we'd been consulted by Cornell et al. ahead of time, but now we are labeled as cut-and-run skeptics.
And if you want to talk about habitat conservation, then just think what we could do with the $$ that are being spent PER WEEK in Iraq (but, of course, we wouldn't be spending that money on conservation anyway, even if there was no war in progress).
OK, I won't mention Iraq again. Sorry.
"Well, when it is degraded it is no more dangerous than Clorox."
Maybe. According to my information, Iraq worked on ways to extend the shelf life of sarin; I'm not sure about the shelf life of mustard gas.
If you found out that someone was going to deploy these munitions in your neighborhood tomorrow, I'm guessing that you'd be a little less confident that they'd prove harmless.
In my opinion, the validation of the Iraqi war is a much broader subject--I'd prefer that this comment thread not go that far off-topic.
My specific point remains this: It is almost certainly incorrect to say that Saddam Hussein possessed no weapons of mass destruction as of 2003.
and lets not forget the fact that donald kennedy the editor of science wrote on how HIS version of science and peer review was different than the kind of science that led up to the claims by the administration re WMD.
ie SCIENCE has real peer review, while intelligence agencies use reverse peer review!
"It is almost certainly incorrect to say that Saddam Hussein possessed no weapons of mass destruction as of 2003. "
Wrong. You and my disconnect is in the definition of WMD. It's a weapon of MASS destruction. So definitely not. Iraq DID NOT possess WMD at the time we started this latest Iraq war. The chances that Saddam or anyone can release Sarin in my neighborhood are the same odds of IBWO being found by the CLO. Zilch.
I would fear plain old dynamite and C4 before I ever would fear Sarin in my neighborhood.
WMD are a crock of scare tactics the neocons have used to scare us with voodoo science!
At CLO, do they call the skeptics "Murtha-feathers"?
Tom,
Getting your information on WMD
from the likes of Rick Santorum
is like getting your Ivory-bill
information from Mary Scott. Scott Ritter, chief U.N. weapons inspecor, has stated publicly that Iraq did not possess viable WMD at the time the U.S. invaded.
It appears that you, of all people,
is a victim of "groupthink".
"You and my disconnect is in the definition of WMD."
Ok, but you better inform the United Nations of your personal definition of WMD.
According to United Nations Resolution 687, sarin is classified as a weapon of mass destruction; I believe this is true of mustard gas as well.
Supporting link here .
But the Nuke....now there's a WMD. Unlike Sarin, Anthrax et al. it's deliverable and massive.
Forget Iraq and WMD. Think South Korea with nukes and Iran with a will to deliver them. And now add this, an incompetent president.
Now that's scary!
Sarin, Anthrax et al are only WMD if you have a means of delivery. Think crop dusters, Saddam and Kurds. Hell, Hitler showed that gas chambers can be WMD. Hell, the sinking of the Indianapolis showed that sharks could be a WMD.
The point is, Voodoo Science is being used to scare us into voting the status quo.
Heck, I would argue that an incompetent president of the U.S. is the biggest WMD in the world.
But by all these standards, Iraq DID NOT have WMD.
"Scott Ritter, chief U.N. weapons inspecor, has stated publicly that Iraq did not possess viable WMD at the time the U.S. invaded."
My information comes directly from a National Ground Center Intelligence report here .
I suspect that Ritter's statement was dated before this document was released on June 21, 2006. If you have an updated quote from Scott Ritter, please post a link.
Tom
It is almost certainly incorrect to say that Saddam Hussein possessed no weapons of mass destruction as of 2003.
Do you feel safer now that Bad Ol' Saddam has been castrated?
I don't. Then again, I live in the Bay Area near the second most densely populated city in the country and not in a target-rich environment for terrorists like Minnesota.
Of course, I'm just pulling your chain and my question is rhetorical. I don't care what your answer is.
Let's focus on the fricking woodpecker.
"Sarin, Anthrax et al are only WMD if you have a means of delivery."
1. According to the U.N., sarin is a WMD all by itself. That answers.com link that I posted says:
"It is 26 times more deadly than cyanide gas and is 20 times more lethal than potassium cyanide. A pinprick sized droplet will kill an adult."
2. Even without a fancy means of delivery, terrorists killed 12 and injured over 5000 with sarin in Tokyo in 1995. Supporting link here .
3. Saddam's sarin evidently DID have a means of delivery--note that the 6/21/06 document refers to 500 "weapons munitions" with sarin.
Hmmm....I see we are still missing each other's points. Think of it this way. Saddam killed more people with bullets than he ever did with bio-agents. So in fact, bullets were Iraq's biggest and truest WMD, Weapon of Mass Distruction.
Ok, why? Because he could deliver them. That's what makes a WMD. Not the existence of Anthrax in some horse stable in Texas (yes it does exist there). Not old left over bombs in Iraq.
To be MASSIVE, it must have massive wide spread delivery. This Japan sarin attack was considered a dud. They could have done much much more damage with a better WMD, called dynamite on the trains. The Japanese sect is even quoted as saying they thought it would kill 10,000 at least.
The american people have a good feel for this. That is why Rick Santorum didn't get much traction on his "big" announcement of wmd in iraq.
(BTW, I agree that his topic should not leave this thread. )
Am I on the wrong website? What happened to debating the existence of the bird?
Oops, Tom, as I posted that last comment I noticed yours beginning to adress "delivery". Now we are on the same page.
Now this is where we will agree to disagree. I would fear plastic explosives and bullets long before I feared of dying from bioagents in this world. And certainly coming from Iraq.
But truthfully, I don't fear any of those. If I truely sat around thinking about it, I can find a lot of reasons to fear Nuke proliferation.
Damn you frickin' bird people. Maybe I can put it in terms you can understand.
Its as if the CLO tried to pawn off some blurry video on us and we insisted that they DELIVER a clear pic of the bird.
Now are you happy?
(just kidding)
"Am I on the wrong website?"
Ideally, I'd like to leave all the Iraq/WMD commentary on this comment thread--hopefully.
it will then appear less often on all subsequent threads.
Personally, I hope I'm about finished with the WMD comments.
One final(?) thing--according to this web page:
"The most widely used definition is that of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons (NBC)."
Notice that bullets, sharks and dynamite are not listed.
For most people, I think that munitions with sarin or mustard gas fall solidly into the "chemical weapons" category above.
Tom, you might want to review this concerning WMDs. It quotes David Kay's comments about Santorum's assertion of WMDs as "wrong to the facts and exaggerated beyond all reason as to the interpretation of the facts."
The reason that the IBWO is being compared to WMDs is that the evidence was flimsy to begin with, but people who should have known better publicly claimed it was irrefutable proof. As the claims fell apart, they grasped at straws and tried to prop up the original assertion.
For comparison's sake, let's look at the two situations this way:
1) Would you have supported an invasion of Iraq if you knew that there were huge doubts about the intell and that it was predicted by the expert inspectors that a few old and degraded pre-Gulf I munitions would be found?
2) Would you have supported an invasion of Arkansas if you knew that both the video and audio evidence had been called into serious question by experts?
BTW, I'll trust David Kay over Instapundit or Powerline any day. They're so predictable that you can express their opinions on an issue in advance.
I would submit that Dynamite, Sharks, and Bullets are also solidly in the "chemical" weapons category. (he said with a big grin on his face). The first two are clearly chemical and the last is powered by chemistry as sure as the IBWO is extinct.
The point is we don't have to accept the word of pseudo "experts". We are the first to have doubted the CLO. We CAN and MUST think for ourselves. Websites prove nothing. If they did, the IBWO would most surely be extant.
Sarin is a dud. Anthrax is a dud. Bullets and dynamite have massive effects everyday in this world, because they are deliverable.
Ok, now we could get into the third aspect that WMD have. Besides, deadliness and deliverability. They must also be in proportion. For instance, why didn't Saddam use his "WMD" in the first Iraq war?
Because he was told it would be out of proportion and that we would, as surely as it doesn't rain in Iraq, use our own WMD or even nukes against him. He was neutralized, in other words.
Saddam and Iraq were nothing to be afraid of.
Are you all aware of the totally disgusting top result of a google search for "Santorum"?
Any devious web experts on this blog? Let's make this site the top result for "ivory-billed"!
Thanks for the link to David Kay's comments. He sounds a bit defensive to me.
I find it very interesting that he says "the ISG found them". Did the ISG in fact find and closely examine all 500 weapons munitions mentioned as found "by Coalition forces" in the 6/21/06 doc? If not, how does he know exactly how lethal these 500 weapons still are? (The 6/21/06 doc says that the remaining agent purity depends on the manufacturing process, potential additives, and environmental storage conditions). And why does he keep referring to 500 as "a very small number"?
I think his comments on the mustard gas are curious:
--
In most cases, the mustard agent has substantially degraded but will burn your skin--burn you," rather, "if skin comes in contact with it."
--
He seems to be working a little too hard to portray the mustard gas as innocuous, but admitting that it will still burn your skin (as it's "supposed" to do) even when "substantially degraded".
And why the "in most cases" language--isn't he implying that for some of these chemical weapons, the mustard gas was NOT substantially degraded?
(All questions above are completely rhetorical).
Tom
P.S. I'm still puzzled by the "bullets are WMD" argument. Saddam had bullets in 2003, correct? Doesn't that mean that he did indeed have WMD?
The other parallel we might draw between the IBWO and WMD support relates to the concept of "emotional investment."
Simply put, people who jumped on the IBWO or WMD bandwagon and spent a lot of time supporting (or even promoting) those concepts can be expected to withdraw their support slowly, in stages, and to leap at (true or false) "glimmers of hope" that their original beliefs might yet have been correct.
In other words, legends die hard.
At least wrt to the WMD thing, the most important facts are that before the war prominent officials made remarkable claims about Saddam's nuclear capabilities and endless inuendo about Iraq's links to 9/11 and Al Qaeda in order to seal up support for the invasion.
Then, after the US invasion, these claims were forgotten or even denied (e.g., Dick Cheney) in favor of new memes about why we "really" went to war on Iraq and why anyone who remained opposed to the war was unpatriotic at best, a traitor at worst.
Now we find ourselves in 2006, with Iraq an ongoing and probably unsolvable disaster but at the moment an utterly forgotten disaster because our nation's remarkable "journalists" are busy analyzing this Israel/Lebanon war more critically than our own war in Iraq. Go figure.
"P.S. I'm still puzzled by the "bullets are WMD" argument. Saddam had bullets in 2003, correct? Doesn't that mean that he did indeed have WMD? "
Ok, Tom, I finally agree with you. Saddam had bullets therefore he had WMD.
Now should we have invaded because he had bullets? Should we cancel Corp projects because a Kayaker said he saw and Ivory Bill?
bingo.
Amy sums it up well;
Iraq is disintegrating, Cheney pushed the Iraq war 5 seconds after 9/11; Cheney's force of will brought everybody else to toe the line; Saddam did use WMD on the Kurds in the 1980's and killed thousands. Now we know he gave it up sometime in the 1990's.
Israel get's blasted by the media, latest count; 400 dead Lebanese and 40 - 50 dead Israelis. Did Israel go overboard, probably, does Israel have a right to defend it's sovereign territory from a hostile state within a state. I would think so. Hezbollah is stronger than the freakin/friggin Lebanese government.
I believe the Iraqi death toll is estimated from as low as 50,000 since March 2003 to the 100,000s.
(So now that we changed the subject from Iraq. )
Instapundit, et al are just as predictable as Daily Kos, et al; let's forget about partisanship; for once. It's too easy to label, it makes life simpler, and then we're trapped in our labels.
Holy friholes, I go out for a few beers and mis amigos del skepticos have turned the Skeptico blog into another blue state red state divisio ... citing powerline and instapundit?? What next?
Amy, have you read the pair of editorials by kennedy (the one on "intelligence science"0 and the one where he goes batshit over fitzcrow and blesses those who raise the dead in hebrew??
You probably have seen these but you came a little late to the party and might have missed them.
So officially can we use WMD / IBWO analogy going forward or has it been established that there were indeed WMD's in iraq that now can be used to justify our turning iraq over to the iranians?
Bush did say he is going to "put a call in to someone and tell them to cut the "sh_t" out ... has anyone heard when that call is going to happen??
Tom-
Dude, you are our hero, but you really need to step back and get a grip here. Please stop focusing on the one fragile figment that the pro-war types are hanging from (the 500 stale gas munitions).
For a change, check out these websites and tell me that it was/is worth it:
http://antiwar.com/casualties/
http://www.iraqbodycount.net/
http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=182
And we sit here questioning/lamenting the diversion of 10 or 20 million dollars to IBWO recovery that would have gone to other real conservation programs......
Ok, everyone, feel free to keep sharing your long-repressed "evidence for WMD in Iraq" thoughts in this comment thread. I feel that I've spoken my piece, and I'll do my best to give you "the last word".
In return, I ask that you do your best to avoid too many Iraq/WMD comments in all subsequent threads on this blog. As you know, there are virtually unlimited places elsewhere on the web for that discussion.
Thanks,
Tom
Non existant IBWO: $20,000,000
Non existant WMD: $1,000,000,000,000
Arguments over same: Priceless
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