This post was inspired by someone who politely asked a question — which is as rare as unobtainium on Pandora these days.
Equally rare is the curiosity behind it:
I’m sincerely curious about “Since I have nothing to say about Ukraine one way or the other.”
I’ll answer that fine inquiry at the end, but you can’t understand the end without getting the beginning.
On that note
We must be clear-sighted in beginnings, for, as in their budding we discern not the danger, so in their full growth we perceive not the remedy.
—MONTAIGNE, Essays . . .
Searching “Iraq WMD” delivers no shortage of Tweets tying Ukraine to intelligence failures from 20 years ago. As I said — I have nothing to say about that, but I have tons to say about this:
Of the countless people issuing their daily distrust in intel over Iraq, how many could tell me what these acronyms stand for?
- ORNL
- INR
- JAEIC
- WINPAC
- NGA
- DIA
- OSP
And once I tell you, how many could tell me what role those places played on Iraq WMD?
Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee. Weapons-Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Defense Intelligence Agency. Office of Special Plans.
Maybe you’re right on Ukraine. And maybe you were right on Iraq. But landing on the right side of an issue is worlds away from being fully informed.
Who has time for that?
All the more reason why it’s so critical to learn from others — as we can’t know it all. But in a world where “nobody’s perfect” — we sure have a helluva lot of know-it-alls.
America’s in perennial pursuit of ideologies — warfare waged with:
opinions lightly adopted but firmly held . . . forged from a combination of ignorance, dishonesty, and fashion
— Life at the Bottom
And that . . .
Is why 99% of you have no idea what role those places played — and yet you’re dead certain you know what’s what. The real story is in the machinery behind the scenes — people and places you’ve never heard of.
Anybody can rail on Rumsfeld, Bush, and Cheney.
But connecting the dots on the clowns they employed to engineer this poppycock is where it’s at:
George W. Bush was one of the last to say so. Yet he alone is accused of lying.
— Thomas Sowell
I don’t play those games, Mr. Sowell:
They all lied
Some circles call that evidence — I call it cowardice . . .
That you don’t have a solid understanding of the story is one thing. That I put it all on a silver platter and you just breeze on by so you can keep conveying your convictions with ease.
Is something else entirely.
Maybe you’d still be right on Ukraine. But coming across with a command of the material on Iraq would bolter your position — and raise the bar of debate (which is the most important matter of all).
And that, is ultimately why I did this:
By Design
America Remains Mired in the Murky
What does it say to you: That on evidence claimed as components to build a nuclear bomb — the “debate” was hijacked by 10-second sound bites?
Shouldn’t any debate establish what the debate is actually about? What does it say about a country that can’t even establish that much on a matter of this magnitude?
The road to reality is blocked by detours designed to keep you going in circles. Purveyors of poppycock reroute you with narratives that avoid detail like Black Death.
The way out is to start with an inconsistency or two that’s narrow in scope — and take the trail where it leads.
To ascertain the truth on any topic
If you’ve got something concrete to go on — that’s your point of entry. By all means, keep the door open in every direction. But by nailing down the definitive first, it paves a clearer path to all the rest.
This country does the exact opposite on everything — lumping it all together and never even approaching where you should have started in the first place:
This chart is misleading in several respects . . . Beams centrifuge never actually worked . . . We can infer . . .
Sounds pretty sloppy to me
Perhaps we should have a conversation to clear up what all this means on issues that have eroded reason beyond recognition?
You’ve probably heard of yellowcake
How about uranium hexafluoride?
Does calling someone a “Bush hater” strike you as a valid counter to that question?
Yellowcake to UF6 Conversion to Uranium Enrichment:
For the sake of argument
Let’s say Saddam had full-blown active WMD programs on chemical & biological weapons worthy of an invasion.
The tubes would still be a lie.
I’ll go one further: Let’s say he had a hidden enrichment program in operation as well, but that the rotors turned out to be carbon fiber — not aluminum.
Getting lucky in finding something you didn’t know about — does not absolve you from a nuclear case that was woven out of whole cloth.
Anyone entering this discussion with sincerity — would come away realizing that there is no debate, and there never was.
They just made it up
A go-to tactic of apologists is that they feel they only have to consider what they want — free to ignore anything they don’t.
And that — makes them bullshitters by definition:
Bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant.
— Blurb to On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt
Anything Goes for apologists trying to preserve what they perceive. I know their Rolodex of Ridicule rabbit-hole routine — all too well:
And Now for the Weather
The rotor speed required to separate uranium isotopes doesn’t care who’s president, and when it comes to ascertaining the truth, neither do I.
In order to maintain such speeds, the material properties of centrifuges are as critical as it gets. You don’t need to interview a world-renowned nuclear scientist to figure that out — but I like to be thorough.
I defy you to find a single instance of anyone on the Right even attempting to make an argument on the dimensions, material, and quantity of the tubes.
You’ll be lucky to find them mentioned at all.
You think it’s just a coincidence that all the “arguments” on the Right just happen to follow the same pattern (conveniently leaving out the marquee claim on a mushroom cloud)?
Something’s not right
And that — is what people miserably fail to do from the start and rarely do by the end: Stop defending and start wondering.
Just take a moment to look at a situation and recognize inconsistencies staring you in the face.
Put away what you believe and find the courage to simply say:
Something’s not right . . .
And follow your instincts from there (leaving your loyalties & assumptions behind).
As I wrote about on The Same Faith-Based Belief on Titan Took Us to War:
Something was clearly out of whack with Stockton Rush and Elizabeth Holmes — people so hell-bent on being disruptors that reality was not an obstacle in their worlds.
Wishful thinking got in the way of reason:
Desperately clinging to desires so deep you’re willing to cast aside your critical thinking.
Wars have started that way
The surgical specificity of this clip puts this lie in its place in 5 minutes alone.
Trillion Dollar Tube
Imagine what I did with 160
So typical of the times . . .
I’m not gonna watch that — but have you see this?
I threw down the gauntlet — but rather than show me the courtesy to consider anything I have to say, you want me to extend you the courtesy you would not give?
It is as though with some people — those who most avidly embrace the “we are right” view — have minds that are closed from the very get-go, and they are entirely incapable of opening them, even just a crack.
There is no curiosity in them. There are no questions in their minds. There are no “what ifs?” or “maybes.”
— Laura Knight-Jadczyk
Case in point
And right on cue . . .
Screenshot and a link that will clarify the Iraq issue
Oh, I forgot to mention that you included a link to predictably deflect from the issue at hand:
So you could unconscionably blow off the only person on the planet who told this story from all the angles that matter most.
How inconsiderate of me.
Somehow your FAQ don’t address any of mine.
First off, how do you explain this:
D.O.E.’s standard is to spin a tube at 20% above 90,000 RPM before failure — so 48,000 short is a pretty loose definition of ‘rough indication.’ And since the entire point of testing should be to replicate the conditions of centrifuges, one would think that the full-blown testing would be performed before the N.I.E. was completed. . . .
Out of 31 tubes in subsequent testing, only one was successfully spun to 90,000 RPM for 65 minutes — which the C.I.A. seized on as evidence in their favor.
One D.O.E. analyst offered a superb analogy of that contorted conclusion: “Running your car up to 6,500 RPM briefly does not prove that you can run your car at 6,500 RPM cross country. It just doesn’t. Your car’s not going to make it.”
In an industry where fractions of a millimeter matter, these guys were playing horseshoes with centrifuge physics.
— Richard W. Memmer: Act II
And how do you explain this:
Could you tell me why the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) — got an equal say on the aluminum tubes for the NIE vote?
An agency that does imagery analysis of the Earth . . .
Same for NSA and other agencies that have no expertise in centrifuge physics.
And why wasn’t JAEIC allowed to weigh in? What’s JAEIC?
Allow me . . .
To put it plainly
What apologists have been doing for decades — is throwing 99 items of shit on the wall in pathetic attempts at making something stick . . .
While flagrantly ignoring what matters most:
Concrete Evidence of Mathematical Certainty
Whether or not some of those items are true has no bearing on this:
How is it possible that I have to explain what should be self-evident?
Never mind the above
And never mind what’s below . . .
When what’s on the surface is all you wish to see.
This guy would tap dance around the issue all day before he’d just STFU for 5 minutes to watch Trillion Dollar Tube.
The bottomless blankness of these people:
Anyone wanting to know the truth would not behave in ways that ensure they never will.
How can you expect anyone to admit when they’re wrong if you won’t?
And every time you allow emotion to run roughshod over reason, you further calcify habits at the other end of the spectrum from these:
Rather than assert that all opinions are equal, students in seminar learn to judge opinions on the basis of the reasons given for those opinions.
Nobody ever had to explain that to me. I’m sure you all feel the same:
And yet here we are
And lo and behold . . .
Here comes the motive: Predictable as night and day — the politics of it all. The same meaningless crap I’ve seen countless times for 2 decades on WMD.
I don’t roll that way . . .
My doc takes both parties to task on Iraq (and then some). Moreover, the truth goes straight to the top with who’s in the White House right now:
On very specific culpability, no less.
How so? How I’d love to live in a world where you’d ask not out of party-line pursuits — but because it’s on the trail to the truth.
This guy doesn’t have the guts to go down that road. Few do!
Given that many influential people are deeply invested in an inimical, knowingly distorted narrative of the Iraq mission, explaining the Iraq mission seems like a quixotic exercise.
Nonetheless, I do what I can . . .
No, you don’t
If ya did, your belief below would be reflected in your efforts (not to mention having the courage & courtesy to show a modicum of consideration for those who challenge you):
Particularly on evidence you know nothing about.
Make us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong, and never to be content with a half truth when the whole can be won
— West Point cadet prayer
Decorate your site with claims all you like — but contrary to increasingly popular opinion:
Your Record Is Who You Are, Not What You Believe
Cognitive dissonance doesn’t care that you signed a pledge.
A fairly famous person on F.A.I.R’s board of advisors once called my writing “brilliant” and was “blown away” by this site and signed up. Alas, he wasn’t too keen on the truth when I took his hero to task.
He wasn’t about to look at undeniable evidence warranting that he change his mind — so he changed the rules:
Right on cue | Never fails
Thank you, Rick Memmer, for your brilliant commentary. I am honored by it.
Such high praise from a man of his caliber is a helluva lot of incentive for me to think these people are the “geniuses” their ever-growing audience thinks they are.
I don’t roll that way either . . .
While I maintain a degree of respect for him — and I’m forever grateful for the inspiration he provided: If you’re part of the problem, I don’t care who you are — I’m calling you out.
And that’s
I’m sincerely curious about “Since I have nothing to say about Ukraine one way or the other.”
As explained on You Got Gold, I cut the connection to our Crap is King culture a few years ago (with the exception of one mission I’ll touch on momentarily).
I’m explaining how we got here in the first place.
I don’t want to be part of the debate — I just want honest debate.
And from decades of dealing with hermetically sealed minds, I came up with an idea for how to do that.
There’s a way we can harness folly from the past for the benefit of the future. It’s as out-of-the-box as it gets, but rooted in timeless truths America made outdated.
I don’t know about current events and I don’t want to: Not in a nation that no longer has any sense of itself.
While I voted for Biden, I didn’t look to see who won. I only found out when a friend told me a week later (knowing I didn’t want to know). I’ve never heard him speak as president (outside of unavoidable background).
My friend told me that something happened on January 6th, but I didn’t know what it was until months later.
I had never even heard of Rittenhouse until right around the verdict.
I can’t offer an informed opinion on the matter, but just from the video alone — I don’t know what the Left is looking at.
And they don’t either
Like the Right, they carry baggage into every issue — so the next outrage is just another vehicle to further their agenda. What I think of these people running around with rifles is precisely to the point of this entire site:
That I can strip away anything extraneous to see a situation for exactly what it is:
On the evidence & moments that matter most:
This nation has no such notion . . .
Following facts going in the direction you desire doesn’t count — anybody can do that.
If we can’t even agree on matters of mathematical certainty, I fail to understand how you can be so clear-eyed on issues not so crystal clear.
If we try to solve society’s problems without overcoming the confusion and aggression in our own state of mind, then our efforts will only contribute to the basic problems, instead of solving them.
— Chögyam Trungpa
The problems that plague America are interrelated — and anything short of addressing that is going nowhere.
I can see that with crystal clear clarity — because unlike most of America:
I Don’t Have Situational Rules
The second you shun evidence that doesn’t fit the narrative you want — you have contaminated your judgment. How quickly you come to your conclusions — and what you’re willing to ignore to solidify them:
That is the underlying message of my efforts.
As I said in my doc:
At the heart of why we fail to live up to our potential as a society is because we excel at polluting even the purest form of fact.
How can we possibly solve serious problems when we refuse to adhere to some semblance of the fundamentals of making sense?
— Richard W. Memmer: Epilogue
Debunking the WMD delusion & Trayvon tale is a conduit for showing how this nation systematically derails debate.
“Everybody believed Iraq had WMD” is not a valid argument any more than “armed only with Skittles.” By the way — how many of you know what Trayvon actually looked like?
It’s not the kid on People magazine I assure you.
I’m not interested in defending Zimmerman — my aim is to expose the irrational behavior of blindly defending Martin and the damage you did by doing so.
The Right wants the Left and the black community to get its act together on matters deeply woven into the fabric of America’s long history of brutality and disgrace:
Slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, murder, decades of civil rights violations, questionable shootings, and so on.
While the Right won’t even look at the material properties of a tube. What’s wrong with that picture — and this one?
Hmm, so the dimensions exactly match the tubes used in Iraq’s history of manufacturing the Nasser-81mm artillery rocket (a reverse-engineered version of the Italian Medusa)
Be quite a coincidence if they weren’t . . .
Ya know, connected
Oh my god
He used an unrelated movie to make a point and tossed in some comedy for effect. What does that say about the quality of his argument?
It says you need to get your head out of your ass — and stop flailing about like an imbecile incapable of understanding anything.
From decades of being increasingly accommodating of liars aligned with your interests:
You kept lowering the bar
And Now There is No Bar
[W]e must accept responsibility for a problem before we can solve it . . .
— M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled
In a nation that incessantly blames and complains (seemingly for sport) — no one’s taking responsibility for anything. The ever-rising ocean of partisan pettiness is gluttony under the guise of concern.
What would you call untold millions marching to a Twitter-rage parade on WMD — dishing on the deaths of Rumsfeld and Powell (and whatever anniversary marks the moment):
But too lazy to take the time to look at what we can do about it.
Of course, that would require holding their own accountable as well:
So there’s that
Happy 20th Anniversary!
Seize the day to be jacked up on fuel to fire off your fury and excuses in a nation that never learns:
But loves to light it up in lip service to virtues.
Ever-so bold behind force fields of fallacy that butcher those “beliefs.“
For 20 years
I’ve been practically spit on for following principles those same people promote on a daily basis. I did the doc to address such behavior, but in the last two years — I’ve seen savagery beyond anything that inspired it:
And that — is a golden opportunity . . .
I’ve always hated Twitter and when I’m done doing what I gotta do — I’m never goin’ back. Until then, I’m sending out a certain set of messages looking for intelligent life (fiercely independent thinkers who want to solve problems — not endlessly talk about them).
Think of my signals as a poor man’s SETI:
I’ve got an idea — and it’s got teeth
Going by the galaxies filled with rock stars of reasoning across the social media universe — I should have no shortage of people eager to examine my idea and discuss how we could improve on it and proceed.
You tell me where those people are — and I’ll gladly send out my signals to them. What I have in mind could turn the tide. I’ve already done all the work — I just need a little help in having it land in the right hands. If you’re game, please contact me through the site or Anchor.Press.gg@gmail.com.
But if you’re not interested in hearing me out and having meaningful conversation — we have nothing to talk about and I wish you well.
I’d just ask that you block me and politely move along. Is that really too much to ask? Apparently so — as some just have to fire off whatever comes to mind on what you instantly perceive.
As for this . . .
This piece is just an intro into the story. Like I said, if you really wanna know the truth, start at the beginning . . .
So we can get to work on the ending:
One Voice Became Two 