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More dangerous than lying us into foreign wars that kill millions of people and bankrupt the country? That's quite a high bar.

smt88 10y ago
Who did that? What was the last war that killed millions?
- rapsey 10y ago
  I guess you don't remember the lead up to the Iraq war.
  - zerocrates 10y ago
    I believe the quibble there is that millions didn't die in the Iraq War.
    - tracker1 10y ago
      s/millions/over a million/g
      - smt88 10y ago
        But that's still likely too high. The truth is important. Getting facts wrong about wars can only help people who are pro-war by making pacifists look uninformed.
        tracker1 10y ago
        Well, how about over a quarter of a million bombs/missiles dropped during the Obama administration? If over half a million deaths in Iraq isn't enough, that number should be sobering.
        smt88 10y ago
        Again, these points are well-made using the real numbers. I could only find 100k bombs under Obama. Can you cite your number?
        tracker1 10y ago
        When I last looked into it, there were over 20k most years (26k in 2016 alone). so more likely closer to 200k (over 8 years), been a while since I looked... In any case, it's a horrific number.
  - komali2 10y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War Estimates range from ~100,000 to 700,000. The Iraq War was a mistake that sixty years from now we will be mocked and judged for, but be careful with words like "millions."
    - ConfuciusSay02 10y ago
      Ahh yes, just an honest mistake, and so long as only one million people are killed, not two, then we can promptly dismiss any concerns. Is that how it works? I wonder if you think the NYT had a hand in pushing for the first Iraq war? How about in Yugoslavia? Panama? Libya? Syria? Or were all of those moral and noble humanitarian wars where the death and destruction was worth it? Although the Iraq war is the best and most blatant example of the NYT's warmongering, it is far from the only one. All of these wars combined easily resulted in millions of deaths.
      - praxulus 10y ago
        No, the way it works is that nobody should get away with lying just because they're calling out a bad thing for being bad.
      - komali2 10y ago
        >so long as only one million people Nobody has claimed one million were killed. Stop trying to spread wrong information, it is the same thing as lying. >I wonder if you think the NYT had a hand in pushing for the first Iraq war? How about in Yugoslavia? Panama? Libya? Syria? Or were all of those moral and noble humanitarian wars where the death and destruction was worth it? Holy fucking non sequitur, batman. What does a media agenda have to do with a moral position on war? How is "NYT had a hand in pushing for" related to the question of whether your examples were "moral and noble humanitarian wars?" You can't just say a thing that's absurd, and then immediately assume they're true, so that you can jump to making a moral attack. Here's a great resource for you: http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/eng207-td/Logic%20and%20Analysis/most_common_logical_fallacies.htm http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/eng207-td/Logic%20and%20Analy... >best and most blatant example of NYT's warmongering Somehow we started at outright lies about the number of deaths in the Iraq war, and concluded that the NYT is a warmongering institution with the power to mobilize the most powerful military on the planet at it's whim, and thus is responsible for every death caused by the US military throughout history. Hey let's take it up a notch, did you know humans never landed on the moon and that Mark Zuckerberg's evil twin, Matt Zuckerberg, is running a robotic pizza factory that snoops through people's emails? Benghazi.
- bulletsvshumans 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War Estimates appear to vary widely, with most in the hundreds of thousands range, but there's one estimate as high as a million deaths in the Iraq War (from the linked page): "Opinion Research Business (ORB) poll conducted August 12–19, 2007, estimated 1,033,000 violent deaths due to the Iraq War. The range given was 946,000 to 1,120,000 deaths. A nationally representative sample of approximately 2,000 Iraqi adults answered whether any members of their household (living under their roof) were killed due to the Iraq War. 22% of the respondents had lost one or more household members. ORB reported that "48% died from a gunshot wound, 20% from the impact of a car bomb, 9% from aerial bombardment, 6% as a result of an accident and 6% from another blast/ordnance." (full Wikipedia page on this survey: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORB_survey_of_Iraq_War_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORB_survey_of_Iraq_War_casualt...)
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- Filligree 10y ago
  The Iraq war killed over half a million, and led to conditions that were a direct cause of ISIS' rise, for Eris knows how many more. I don't know how much you want to attribute to it overall, but the war was based on fake evidence.
  - smt88 10y ago
    I agree that the war was based on lies. I agree it was a travesty. I honestly just wanted to know if I was correct in assuming that 1) they were indeed talking about Iraq, and 2) that they were accusing NYT of causing that war.
jayess 10y ago
Which, of course, the NYT played its part in fanning the flames of war.
- dmix 10y ago
  NYT is still very war hawkish. Which wasn't so bad before when they were feigning neutrality. They were just a mainstream US paper pushing the 'company' line of their various connections in the gov. It was easy to look past. But now that they've become more blatantly partisan (maybe as they infer here because it clearly sells more to be hyper partisan) it leaves me with an odd feeling that they are pushing back hard towards the Clinton-esque center left war-friendly surveillance-state Russian-boogiemen establishment politics that so many people (not just on the right) seem to be trying evolve beyond. At least the younger generations. And they say Trump is harking back to the old days... After reading NYT daily for nearly a decade I'v moved to WSJ. It is much more expensive but I've been much happier reading it - as someone who doesn't care for either US party. I don't have to sift through vague connections to Russia or questionable accusations of secret white nationalism every time I read a political story about someone related to the current administration. For example, I was just reading a profile of Donald Trump Jr. in NYT. Half way through the article they say he's been accused of making 'white nationalist' statements. Upon further reading it turns out to be because he made an off hand reference to 'gas chamber' in a random speech. So instead of making the obvious assumption he was referring to the form of capital punishment used in the US until the 1990s (and still used as a back up to lethal injection in some states), which is exactly what he claims to have been referring to, they decide to infer he was making some anti-semitic reference to the holocaust. I am far from a Trump supporter but this type of weak partisan character assassination doesn't belong in a reputable paper like NYT. So I'm not surprised to see a random swipe at Trump within the first few paragraphs of a non-political story... it's their shtick now.
  - specialist 10y ago
    NYT's opposition to Trump et al is not partisan, its self-interest (survival).
    - 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
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kristianc 10y ago
GWB's first term average approval rating was 62% and at one point was as high as 90%. A lot of Americans have since found their opposition to these illegal foreign wars.
- parthdesai 10y ago
  Hmm, where was the opposition when libya happened?
- rfrank 10y ago
  The antiwar left basically disappeared when Obama took office.
  - TheRealDunkirk 10y ago
    A commenter above says that it's a proven fact that Fox News is interested in nothing but propaganda, and the NYT is dedicated to truth, though they occasionally fail. When I look back on the Bush administration, and I think about how Code Pink was pushed front-and-center for 8 years by ABC/NBC/CBS, protesting the war(s), and how they absolutely disappeared once Obama took over, even though he materially continued the same policy in the middle east, I can't help but feel that every organization that is NOT Fox News was joined together in PRECISELY the same sort of propaganda that Fox is accused of. But, hey, I guess it's just me.
    - rfrank 10y ago
      Hah, I'm the one arguing with those people too. People don't like to admit to themselves they consume the same thing they hate. But I'm rate limited because moderation of political discussion on this website is a joke unless you want to agree with everyone, so no more comments from me there.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
dave_sullivan 10y ago
That's a cheap and lazy argument, trying to deflect attention from the crimes of one party by discussing the crimes of another. They're both dangerous enough to kill you; both should be discussed as separate issues, not as a comparison.
- brazzledazzle 10y ago
  I think it's technically the same party but you wouldn't know it by looking at them.
- ConfuciusSay02 9y ago
  It was the OP who made the comparison - I was simply replying.
TheCoelacanth 10y ago
Give him time. If there is no media around to complain when he starts wars, then yes that is more dangerous.
- tracker1 10y ago
  Really? I mean, it's not like the last Democrat president did anything to stop any wars. Or curb surveillance... or actually bring much transparency into government. All things he promised in his first campaign... I mean, constitutionally Obama was plainly against it, but I at least had some hope when he was elected he might actually do some of the things he'd promised. But no, more war, more bombs, more spying and surveillance. It's not like any of this started with Trump, and isn't like any of it would really be stopped by a president for the other party, that served in the last administration over the department most directly covering spying and warfare.

smt88 10y ago

Who did that? What was the last war that killed millions?

rapsey 10y ago
I guess you don't remember the lead up to the Iraq war.
- zerocrates 10y ago
  I believe the quibble there is that millions didn't die in the Iraq War.
  - tracker1 10y ago
    s/millions/over a million/g
    - smt88 10y ago
      But that's still likely too high. The truth is important. Getting facts wrong about wars can only help people who are pro-war by making pacifists look uninformed.
      - tracker1 10y ago
        Well, how about over a quarter of a million bombs/missiles dropped during the Obama administration? If over half a million deaths in Iraq isn't enough, that number should be sobering.
        smt88 10y ago
        Again, these points are well-made using the real numbers. I could only find 100k bombs under Obama. Can you cite your number?
        tracker1 10y ago
        When I last looked into it, there were over 20k most years (26k in 2016 alone). so more likely closer to 200k (over 8 years), been a while since I looked... In any case, it's a horrific number.
- komali2 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War Estimates range from ~100,000 to 700,000. The Iraq War was a mistake that sixty years from now we will be mocked and judged for, but be careful with words like "millions."
  - ConfuciusSay02 10y ago
    Ahh yes, just an honest mistake, and so long as only one million people are killed, not two, then we can promptly dismiss any concerns. Is that how it works? I wonder if you think the NYT had a hand in pushing for the first Iraq war? How about in Yugoslavia? Panama? Libya? Syria? Or were all of those moral and noble humanitarian wars where the death and destruction was worth it? Although the Iraq war is the best and most blatant example of the NYT's warmongering, it is far from the only one. All of these wars combined easily resulted in millions of deaths.
    - praxulus 10y ago
      No, the way it works is that nobody should get away with lying just because they're calling out a bad thing for being bad.
    - komali2 10y ago
      >so long as only one million people Nobody has claimed one million were killed. Stop trying to spread wrong information, it is the same thing as lying. >I wonder if you think the NYT had a hand in pushing for the first Iraq war? How about in Yugoslavia? Panama? Libya? Syria? Or were all of those moral and noble humanitarian wars where the death and destruction was worth it? Holy fucking non sequitur, batman. What does a media agenda have to do with a moral position on war? How is "NYT had a hand in pushing for" related to the question of whether your examples were "moral and noble humanitarian wars?" You can't just say a thing that's absurd, and then immediately assume they're true, so that you can jump to making a moral attack. Here's a great resource for you: http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/eng207-td/Logic%20and%20Analysis/most_common_logical_fallacies.htm http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/eng207-td/Logic%20and%20Analy... >best and most blatant example of NYT's warmongering Somehow we started at outright lies about the number of deaths in the Iraq war, and concluded that the NYT is a warmongering institution with the power to mobilize the most powerful military on the planet at it's whim, and thus is responsible for every death caused by the US military throughout history. Hey let's take it up a notch, did you know humans never landed on the moon and that Mark Zuckerberg's evil twin, Matt Zuckerberg, is running a robotic pizza factory that snoops through people's emails? Benghazi.
bulletsvshumans 10y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War Estimates appear to vary widely, with most in the hundreds of thousands range, but there's one estimate as high as a million deaths in the Iraq War (from the linked page): "Opinion Research Business (ORB) poll conducted August 12–19, 2007, estimated 1,033,000 violent deaths due to the Iraq War. The range given was 946,000 to 1,120,000 deaths. A nationally representative sample of approximately 2,000 Iraqi adults answered whether any members of their household (living under their roof) were killed due to the Iraq War. 22% of the respondents had lost one or more household members. ORB reported that "48% died from a gunshot wound, 20% from the impact of a car bomb, 9% from aerial bombardment, 6% as a result of an accident and 6% from another blast/ordnance." (full Wikipedia page on this survey: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORB_survey_of_Iraq_War_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORB_survey_of_Iraq_War_casualt...)
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Filligree 10y ago
The Iraq war killed over half a million, and led to conditions that were a direct cause of ISIS' rise, for Eris knows how many more. I don't know how much you want to attribute to it overall, but the war was based on fake evidence.
- smt88 10y ago
  I agree that the war was based on lies. I agree it was a travesty. I honestly just wanted to know if I was correct in assuming that 1) they were indeed talking about Iraq, and 2) that they were accusing NYT of causing that war.

jayess 10y ago

Which, of course, the NYT played its part in fanning the flames of war.

dmix 10y ago
NYT is still very war hawkish. Which wasn't so bad before when they were feigning neutrality. They were just a mainstream US paper pushing the 'company' line of their various connections in the gov. It was easy to look past. But now that they've become more blatantly partisan (maybe as they infer here because it clearly sells more to be hyper partisan) it leaves me with an odd feeling that they are pushing back hard towards the Clinton-esque center left war-friendly surveillance-state Russian-boogiemen establishment politics that so many people (not just on the right) seem to be trying evolve beyond. At least the younger generations. And they say Trump is harking back to the old days... After reading NYT daily for nearly a decade I'v moved to WSJ. It is much more expensive but I've been much happier reading it - as someone who doesn't care for either US party. I don't have to sift through vague connections to Russia or questionable accusations of secret white nationalism every time I read a political story about someone related to the current administration. For example, I was just reading a profile of Donald Trump Jr. in NYT. Half way through the article they say he's been accused of making 'white nationalist' statements. Upon further reading it turns out to be because he made an off hand reference to 'gas chamber' in a random speech. So instead of making the obvious assumption he was referring to the form of capital punishment used in the US until the 1990s (and still used as a back up to lethal injection in some states), which is exactly what he claims to have been referring to, they decide to infer he was making some anti-semitic reference to the holocaust. I am far from a Trump supporter but this type of weak partisan character assassination doesn't belong in a reputable paper like NYT. So I'm not surprised to see a random swipe at Trump within the first few paragraphs of a non-political story... it's their shtick now.
- specialist 10y ago
  NYT's opposition to Trump et al is not partisan, its self-interest (survival).
  - 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

kristianc 10y ago

GWB's first term average approval rating was 62% and at one point was as high as 90%. A lot of Americans have since found their opposition to these illegal foreign wars.

parthdesai 10y ago
Hmm, where was the opposition when libya happened?
rfrank 10y ago
The antiwar left basically disappeared when Obama took office.
- TheRealDunkirk 10y ago
  A commenter above says that it's a proven fact that Fox News is interested in nothing but propaganda, and the NYT is dedicated to truth, though they occasionally fail. When I look back on the Bush administration, and I think about how Code Pink was pushed front-and-center for 8 years by ABC/NBC/CBS, protesting the war(s), and how they absolutely disappeared once Obama took over, even though he materially continued the same policy in the middle east, I can't help but feel that every organization that is NOT Fox News was joined together in PRECISELY the same sort of propaganda that Fox is accused of. But, hey, I guess it's just me.
  - rfrank 10y ago
    Hah, I'm the one arguing with those people too. People don't like to admit to themselves they consume the same thing they hate. But I'm rate limited because moderation of political discussion on this website is a joke unless you want to agree with everyone, so no more comments from me there.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

dave_sullivan 10y ago

That's a cheap and lazy argument, trying to deflect attention from the crimes of one party by discussing the crimes of another. They're both dangerous enough to kill you; both should be discussed as separate issues, not as a comparison.

brazzledazzle 10y ago
I think it's technically the same party but you wouldn't know it by looking at them.
ConfuciusSay02 9y ago
It was the OP who made the comparison - I was simply replying.

TheCoelacanth 10y ago

Give him time. If there is no media around to complain when he starts wars, then yes that is more dangerous.

tracker1 10y ago
Really? I mean, it's not like the last Democrat president did anything to stop any wars. Or curb surveillance... or actually bring much transparency into government. All things he promised in his first campaign... I mean, constitutionally Obama was plainly against it, but I at least had some hope when he was elected he might actually do some of the things he'd promised. But no, more war, more bombs, more spying and surveillance. It's not like any of this started with Trump, and isn't like any of it would really be stopped by a president for the other party, that served in the last administration over the department most directly covering spying and warfare.