excellent, but one problem


I thought this series was really good. I liked part 1 the best because of the great background information.

The only part I didn't like was how hard they were trying to equate the neocons with terrorists. I mean it's just sooo ridiculous to put them side by side in this way. Yeah sure, people who talk up the Soviets in order to justify increasing their budgets... they're JUST LIKE terrorists who stage a bloody coup!

Ignoring that though, I really liked all the old footage of speeches, meetings, etc that I'd never seen before.

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The comparisons were not methodological but ideological. They weren't being compared with the terrorists specifically, but with the Islamist phenomenon generally.

Never say, "Worst movie ever" to someone who's seen Highlander 2

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I think you have it entirely backwards. Their ideologies are obviously different. I would say that "establishing nightmares to maintain power" is a methodology. In that respect, the groups are similar. However it is far too abstract to be meaningful.

The details of both their ideologies and methodologies are SO different that the comparisons made in the show are simply ludicrous.

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Their ideologies are similar. Both groups feel threatened by liberalism and increasing freedoms, and feel that they have to take control of the people even if they have to use dubious means to do it. Both believe the ends justify the means, both hate freedom, both think religion is sacred and should be followed strictly, etc.

Their methodologies are different in that one group (islamic fundamentalists) goes very far in the "ends justify the means" thing, while the other (neocons) just tries to bend the rules and stay safe but effective.

It is not power that they really want, they need power to control the people so that their religious views and ideologies will be kept in people's minds.

http://www.RentaExtra.com

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Very well put. I'm afraid the Neocon movement and the Islamic fundamentalist movement have more in common than most people will ever know. Meanwhile, I'd like to add that if the Neocon methodology results in something like the invasion and occupation of Iraq, which has already claimed thousands of American lives and something like 90+ thousand Iraqi civilian lives, even the end results of both groups' "end justifies the means" ideology is similar. So I don't even draw as big of a distinction there as the original poster does.

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bend the rules? Safe but effective? The Neoconservatives blantanly lied to fullfill their agenda. They killed countless people at the end of the Cold War and they feed false propaganda into the system to bring down Clinton, which they are now doing to Obama, (Kenyan born, death panels) the rantings of an insane idealistic group of pathetic political terrorists, who back up their argements with little or no substance and psuedoscience. The neoconservatives bogus morones who feed off the instrinsic fear of a population that is too easily swayed by its religious ideolgy.

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I think Bush and Blair are exactly like terrorists: They have illegally invaded nations and murdered, raped, abused and tortured innocent men, women and children. They are perpetuating lies about Islam and Muslims, and their foreign policies are creating more anti-Americanism than ever existed before 9/11. If anything, Bush and Blair are fuelling terrorism through their own acts of terror against innocent civilians in countries that don't belong to them. Peace.

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9/11 and 7/7 were both inside jobs, "false flag" operations by intelligence agencies of the Anglo-American axis done to reinforce the terror threat and consolidate police power and justify aggressive imperial conquests. The elusive "Al-CIA-duh" is always the illusinary enemy to scare the populace into submission to government and corperate madness in the name of fighting terror. The "exaggerated" Soviet threat of thirty years ago or the Islamic Fundamentalist boogeyman of today or the "Goldstein" character in George Orwell's "1984"... It's all so similar.

This film is an important statement, especially since it was made by the BBC the year before the 7/7 government terror bombings. BBC would never release this now. It would've been buried had it been made prior to July 2005 but hadn't yet been shown.

It neglects to go into the various neo-con terror attacks during the seventies and eighties where Communists were falsely blamed to scare the masses. Look up "Operation Gladio" to find out more on that.

The film is obviously done from within the false left-right paradigm, catering to those on the "left" and portraying Bill Clinton as more-or-less a poor victim of demonization and dirty tricks character assasination from the neo-cons. One really needs to go back in time to the late 1800's and the birth of the Fabian Socialists. It'd be interesting to fit together that with the Neo-Cons. Voila, welcome the the globalist domination of the New World Order. It almost seems like Fabian Socialists of old and the Neo-Cons of today are stylistically different management teams with differing techniques to achieve world power. Or maybe they just are in charge of different "Acts" in the "Play" that is geopolitics, the "world stage."

I saw much psychological insight into the Straussian Neo-cons and the Islamic Fundamentalists, but the film stops short on many areas. There is only so far the BBC would go in 2004, and now THIS film could never be made after the government-sponsored terror attacks of 7/7. They made this one at just the right time. These Machiavellian madmen make me sick. Doing evil to combat evil doesn't result in some noble good! We will all pay for this in the end. I don't know how, but it doesn't look good.

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I think Bush and Blair are exactly like terrorists: They have illegally invaded nations and murdered, raped, abused and tortured innocent men, women and children. They are perpetuating lies about Islam and Muslims, and their foreign policies are creating more anti-Americanism than ever existed before 9/11. If anything, Bush and Blair are fuelling terrorism through their own acts of terror against innocent civilians in countries that don't belong to them. Peace.


Very well said!

"When the world gets in my face I say HAVE A NICE DAY"

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Very well said!


Really? Hmm. Show me who Blair or Bush have "raped." Where are the children they have tortured? Who have they murdered?

This kind of idiotic sentiment can only thrive in an ignorant environment. If you knew the first thing about Islamist ideology, you would go red-faced with embarassment for saying something so stupid.

Well said, you say? Let's see what you say when Europeans, with their culture already on the decline, needs us awful Americans to save their sorry asses again. When the 40% of British Muslims who currently want sharia in England becomes 60%, and 70% and 80%. When Europeans are finally forced to wake up out of their multiculturally induced coma and realize their home is no longer their own, then we'll see what you have to say. Remember these shameful opinions of yours in twenty years when you wake up in a Balkanized Europe living under sharia.

No amount of begging or apologizing will make up for your blinkered, hateful, arrogant demonziation of America.

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=24211_Bernard_Lewis-_Muslims_About_to_Take_over_Europe&only

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/thinktanks/story/0,,2000984,00.html

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Excuse me but...

I am an European and yes, Islam is definitely more in trend than Christianity (by the way, I am "without confession", left chruch when i was 18).

After carefully reading your post I have a few questions...

What do you have against a foreign culture?
Are you a strict christian?

Lots of my friends are muslim, damn, they're cool folks (the ones I hang out with), good conversation partners, culturally inspiring, live a totally normal life, yes, and sometimes have to excuse theirselves for religious holidays, just as I have to excuse myself when celebrating christmas, easter and holy Nikolaus with my family. They sometimes approach my female friends even more polite than I do and don't oppress my thoughts, wishes or plans. yes, there are a lot of foreign people in my country who i would just kick in butt, but definitely not more than as many Austrians (where I live) who I'd REALLY like to buttkick. If you can ignore all the idiots surrounding you why is it so hard to ignore those few foreign ones too? Trust me, there's a lot that other cultures have to offer? Ever ate Pizza? Ever had Sushi? Ever went to a Fast Food Restaurant and had "French" Fries? Do you have a vault? (Muslim invention by the way)

What's your problem, really? Your statements are racist, ignorant and xenophobic...

Of course Bush or Blair haven't raped or tortured anyone, but basically they have given the orders to. Nowadays you can do a lot in the name of freedom. and YOU buy it! Good on ya mate!

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"Who have they murdered?"

Tens of thousands of civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan etc. have been killed in the attacks they ordered, many times more than have been killed by alleged "terrorists".

"Let's see what you say when Europeans, with their culture already on the decline, needs us awful Americans to save their sorry asses again"

What can I say? I'm impressed. This is possibly the most racist and blinkered statement I have ever seen on the IMDB. Well done.




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Regardless of what your ideology colored glasses tell you, casualties of war cannot be considered "murder victims."

If you ever figure out what murder means, be sure to let me know who Bush and Blair have murdered.

I'm still waiting on the rape charges.

As for your claim that my prediction about America having to save Europe again is "blinkered" and "racist" (?), it's happened twice before. Why should you be surprised if it happens again?

Be sure to let me know if you figure out what "racist" means, too.

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Any good leader feels responsible for the events that befall the people he/she governs especially if they chose for the events to happen. Both americans and arabs are not mindless zombies trying to take over the world.
Bush is too stupid to identify his moral responsibility and realize what those under him are doing. It is his sole responsibility to take charge of them to do constructive things. Politicians aren't visionaries or idealists anymore which is why they better be bloody good managers because that's what they're paid to do.
People have been immoral and imperfect ever since the beginning of time. Moral boundaries are defined by current culture and does not apply for an indefinite amount of time. If you view the subject so critically, you can call the earliest artisans and metalworkers irresponsible because they didn't do the farm work.

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"Who have they murdered?"

Tens of thousands of civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan etc. have been killed in the attacks they ordered, many times more than have been killed by alleged "terrorists".


Well let's ask a further question. When, and on whom, have they specifically ordered the armed forces to not only kill, but actually seek out innocent civilians? Now answer me this: When has an Islamic terrorist ordered the killing of innocent civilians?

You're looking at a moral relativist argument here that is beyond galling. Do people die in military interventions? Yes. Are they regretted? Of course. Are they worth fighting? Yes.

Also, why the inverted commas, not to mention the "alleged", 'terrorists'. Have they not actually been blowing themselves up this whole time? Cheney just invited Michael Bay out to Iraq for a few month's special effects workout? And how many of these people are so blinkered by the rigours of their fascist and imperial (even by design) religion that they kill their own citizens in suicide attacks which now far outweigh casualties caused by America or British troops. Yes, I know that's an uncomfortable statistic for you.

Lastly, to the person before mentioning the Islamic friends they have that are cordial, culturally plural, nice to females etc, good. Unfortunately this isn't always the case. Again, the statistics don't lie in the amount of Muslims that want Sharia law imposed here in Britain (where I live) and abroad.

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Well let's ask a further question. When, and on whom, have they specifically ordered the armed forces to not only kill, but actually seek out innocent civilians? Now answer me this: When has an Islamic terrorist ordered the killing of innocent civilians?


Funny. You obviously dont think things through that much do you? What do you think war involves? When the war began there was a campaign of bombing that went on every night for about three weeks. They bombed entire cities. Now.....you dont think that this was ordering the death of innocent people. Im ashamed you're british.

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I think you missed my point that there is a fundamental difference of morality when a country launches bombs, and someone drives a car loaded with explosives into as heavily a populated area as possible. Yes, both are murder, but you're talking about a moral relativity that isn't there. You can't just say both are as bad as each other because people died. You've got to examine things like intent.

Now the bombing campaign you mention never, not once, intentionally targeted civilian areas. What is the point of that, militarily. Of course you know there will be casualties, but you don't intentionally seek them out.

And I'm not British; I don't give a flying fuq about nationality.

So do you at least accept there is a burden of moral relativity between the two sides you're trying to ignore by calling both as simply 'murder'?

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That's the point of the documentary. Although their methods were different and the actors are different, their aims and ultimate goals are the same: to limit liberalism by emphasizing "nightmares" (an enemy so great to society that a physical and ideological war must be waged to defeat this enemy at all costs).

And the costs I mention are the freedoms and liberties that many have fought so hard for. For the neoconservatives, the costs that must be given up by society are freedom (to criticize, to obtain information, etc...) and the rights of minorities and the poor. Democracy can take a backseat until the nightmare is over, which will never happen. There will always be an enemy for the neoconservatives. First it was the USSR, now it's Muslims, and it will probably be the Chinese next, and so on.

Similarly, for Islamic terrorists, it's much the same thing. The costs that must be given up by society are freedom of choice, freedom to pursue liberalism, etc... . For Islamic terrorists, the West and democracy will always be a threat. Which is why the United States, as long as it continues to have a presence in the Middle East, will always be a target.

That's why the neoconservatives and terrorists, although not being equated, can be compared side by side and many similarities pointed out.

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What rights of the minorities and poor have been taken away in the US? Only this year have the conservatives lost power in the federal government. Since they have been in control for years and thier agenda is to take away rights and individual choices of freedom and liberal pursuits, what specifically have they done to accomplish this? I don't believe that freedom to criticize has been taken away, for I have heard almost constant criticism of this administration since its conception (with a slight lull immediately after 9/11). If the freedom to pursue liberalism has been taken away, how is it that the democrats gained control of congress this past election? What freedom of choice has been taken away? You may bring up the right to privacy as a reply, but you did not bring this up initially. And although I may personally prefer to live in a state where I enjoy as much privacy as possible, the constitution does not guarantee this right as clearly as many believe. This from http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/index.php/Privacy:

"Although not explicity stated in the text of the Constitution, in 1890 then to be Justice Louis Brandeis extolled 'a right to be left alone.' This right has developed into a liberty of personal autonomy protected by the 14th amendment. The 1st, 4th, and 5th Amendments also provide some protection of privacy, although in all cases the right is narrowly defined... In all of its forms, however, the right of privacy must be balanced against the state's compelling interests."

I have as liberal a philosophy as most people I know, but I do not subscribe to the theories often batted around in liberal circles. I have tried to convince myself for years that it is all hyperbole, but as the partisianship grows more and more divisive, it is impossible to deny that people actually believe a lot of this rhetoric.

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The worst freedom lost in the USA is the idea that everyone, no matter his or her position, is subject to the same laws. The White House has explicitly stated, and acted on the statement, that no one and nothing -- not the courts, not the Congress (the people's representatives, remember?), and not the people themselves -- has the right to prevent the president from doing anything he wants to anyone he wants for any reason he wants. The administration maintains that the president, the vice president, and anyone they so empower are above the law.

That's not a republic with the rule of law; that's a monarchy with the divine right of kings.

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I understand your frustration.

Indulge me for a moment, I have a story:

A few months ago I was traveling home from the video store and approached a red light intersection and prepared to stop. As I rolled slowly to the white line to stop, the light turned green and I proceeded to go through the intersection. As I started to turn my steering wheel to the left, as I was halfway through the intersection, a police car came to a screeching halt as it was about to ram into the side of my car. I slammed my brakes as well thinking that this officer was in pursuit and I needed to get out of the way. I stopped and thankfully no cars collided. I signalled the officer to go ahead and pass and she declined, signaling me to go through the intersection. I did and proceeded to head home. As soon as my heart returned to a normal pace, I see a cop car in my rear view mirror "blue lighting me" to pull over. I did so.

As the officer walked up to my car, I told her that I was sorry, I did not see her blue lights on or hear her siren (still thinking that she must have been in pursuit). She told me that I was supposed to "check both ways before proceeding into an intersection" and asked for my license. After she spent an inordinate amount of time running my information from her patrol car, she returned and handed me a ticket for running a red light. I asked her why she advised me to "check both ways before proceeding" to run a red light, if that is what she truly believed I did. She said that if I wanted to dispute it I would have to appear in court.

Well, fast forward a month and I did dispute it in court. We held a trial and the officer played dumb about the whole incident. She didn't lie about the incident, but simply stated as a response to every question that she did not recall (which she probably didn't, having cited hundreds of people since then). The judge ruled in her favor and I paid a fine for running a red light when, in fact, she is the one who ran the red light and nearly hit me.

I say all that to point out the fact that, not only do many people in government possess the "above the law" priviledge, but it doesn't take being the president of the country to possess said priviledge. A common police officer with an annual salary that few would trade their own for is above the law, so you are surprised that the individual that holds the highest public office in the country is?

And that circumstance is not new, welcome to a reality that has existed for centuries and will indefinately continue. The powerful have always enjoyed priviledges that the rest of us do not. It is not fair, I agree, but it is not an injustice only exploited by the Bush administration and never before by other powerful individuals.

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Power hires stupid ! I invite you to read this:
http://www.sandersresearch.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1024&Itemid=41

Sanders Research Associates ::
When the inmates take charge 11/21/2006 03:52 PM
When the inmates take charge
By Chris Sanders
Nov/15/2006
If you have ever thought that the world seems crazy, there is a good reason. It may well be that the people running it are crazy. After all, they deliberately hire dysfunctional people to do their dirty work.

Now that the US mid term elections are over, it remains to be seen how long it is going to take for disillusion to set in. Democrats are understandably delighted with the result. Whether or not the voters who delivered it appreciate the reality that their leadership has no more idea than the
Republicans about how to chart a new course forward is doubtful. The truth of the matter is that the Democrats won because they are not Republicans, not because they are bringing anything new to the table.

There is certainly no sign of any change in matters Middle Eastern. The new Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, is said to have claimed on numerous occasions that the creation of the state of Israel was the greatest event of the twentieth century. Even allowing for the creative hyperbole due a politician in the course of pandering to an audience, this is quite a statement. What amazes us is that every politician on Capitol Hill is not competing to distance themselves from Israel rather than praise it. While Americans were voting last week, the IDF was engaged in a frenzied killing spree in Gaza, using 155mm artillery to pulverize an apartment block. A UN Security Council resolution quite rightly taking Israel to task was predictably, and sadly, vetoed by the US. How this advances American interests, or for that matter Israeli interests, or even more particularly Jewish interests, is completely beyond us.

It is a fact that US military doctrine includes an injunction to keep the enemy off balance by making him think that one is crazy. The insane can be unpredictable, and the idea is that one’s enemy can be forced to prepare for
contingencies that he might otherwise not waste time and resources on. This is sensible enough as far as it goes, but the US military and Israel’s appear to have taken this another step and decided to really be insane. This may not be as crazy as it sounds. American historian Alfred McCoy, in the course of his book

A Question of Torture , documents the use by the American CIA of psychological profiling in the Sanders Research Associates :: When the inmates take charge 11/21/2006 03:52 PM
A Question of Torture , documents the use by the American CIA of psychological profiling in the 1950s in its efforts to staff the South Korean CIA. What the Americans were looking for were dependent personalities with low self esteem who would be easy to manipulate and thrive in the sort of unbalanced social situations that exist in the interrogation room. That was more than fifty
years ago. It takes little imagination to consider the possibility that as these people rose in the ranks they themselves would be applying psychological profiling to select new recruits. It should not take more than couple of generations for entire organisations to be staffed by people that you would
not only not want your daughter to date but whom you would in normal circumstances lock up.

McCoy’s detailed study of the Philippine armed forces suggests that this might in fact be the case, which makes one wonder. Who are these people in Washington, really? It is all too easy to imagine Dick Cheney, with his twisted grin and poor aim with a shotgun as the Freddie Krueger of Pennsylvania Avenue, but that is, no doubt, unfair. After all, he is just trying to get hold of enough oil so that those of us in the investment management industry can keep driving our sports cars. Doing so by invading Iraq may be dumb, but you wouldn’t call it crazy. Consider, on the other hand, retired American Colonel Ralph Peters, apparently the author of numerous books and well thought of enough to publish in the Armed Forces Magazine. Peters enjoys shocking his audience with statements like “Oh, and one other dirty little secret from 5000 years of history. Ethnic cleansing works.”

Peters, like communists, zionists and other political agitators is fond of using history to make points that otherwise don’t stand the tests of logic or time. Whether you dress it up with phrases like “scientific socialism” as did the communists, or superstition as do the zionists, or just invent it
like the Nazis, the “tide” of history is usually just eyewash to conceal a more mundane agenda.

How exactly ethnic cleansing “works” is shown in the horrific pictures of the Beit Hanoun massacre in Gaza last week. Invoking “5000 years of history” to justify mass murder is just another way for Peters to fool himself into thinking he is smart while demonstrating to the rest of us that he is anything but.

Essentially all Peters is saying is that other countries have gotten away with mass murder, so why not us? The large wars of the last century have all involved ethnic cleansing in a big way to achieve political ends and to supposedly “solve” otherwise insoluble “problems.” This is something that Jews themselves have first hand knowledge of, and ought to give Israel’s leadership pause for thought. Instead, it seems determined to wallow in brutality, when in fact all eighty years of brutality has achieved is yet more claims that a little more is all that’s needed for success. In fact, if we are going to resort to history, we might note that the US is no slouch at the killing game. Its war in Vietnam, for instanc,e resulting in somewhere between two and five million deaths, and that was just the locals. At the end of it all the US lost, and lost thoroughly. None of the premises that were used to initiate the war were valid, from the painfully stupid Domino Theory to the fabricated Gulf of Tonkin incident. Does this sound familiar?

When one looks at the cost of the Iraq war, it is hard to keep from thinking about how much energy efficiency the money spent killing Iraqis might buy. Instead, American taxpayers have paid something like $145 per barrel for the oil
that Iraq has produced since the invasion in March 2003 (using the cost of the war to date as numerator and the amount of oil produced as denominator). To this add the pointless squandering of the positive image that the United
States once had in the region. It is one thing to be the world’s only superpower, but as the US is demonstrating, once you start using that super power, you had better be successful, and fast. Using super power to lose wars is just an advertisement of super weakness.
Today Washington is atwitter with the sound of Democrats exulting in victory they don’t deserve and anticipation of a withdrawal from Iraq. Don’t count on it. The psychos are in charge, perhaps the only true bipartisan movement in the
country.

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<b>Although their methods were different and the actors are different, their aims and ultimate goals are the same</b>

On a very abstract level ("limit liberalism" or retain power) you might be right. In reality though their aims are very different. Would you compare terrorists to two-year-olds because they both cause spectacles to get their way? That's a bad comparison even though in some respect it's "true".

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I have not seen this particular documentary and would relish the opportunity to view it. I would like to know if Mr Curtis mentions the Project fo the New American Century in this feature. This Neo-con think-tank/ideology goal is real and has been ratified by White House players including Rumsfeld. Something people should definatly check out.

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I would like to know if Mr Curtis mentions the Project fo the New American Century in this feature.


Oh yes, Curtis goes into some detail about this group.

I have not seen this particular documentary and would relish the opportunity to view it.


Go to Google Video and enter "The Power of Nightmares," and it'll come right up, in three parts. Kind of irritating to have to watch it on such a small screen, but it's definitely worth viewing.

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Hi Thingy,

Could you please tell me where he goes into Detail about PNAC specifically? I would argue that he simply interviews people involved with PNAC without actually mentioning that group at all. Later,

-David Chipman

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Could you please tell me where he goes into Detail about PNAC specifically? I would argue that he simply interviews people involved with PNAC without actually mentioning that group at all. Later,


Dunno... I watched it on Google Video a ways back, and I can't remember all the details. But I have a DVD on the way and I'll be watching it soon with some friends, and I'll try and jot down any details regarding the PNAC.

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Hi Thingy,

I lok forward to hearing what you have to say, once you've recieved your copy of the video. BTW, you know you can download the three parts of the documentary from the internet (hint! hint!), right? Later,

-David Chipman

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Yes, I just haven't cultivated the patience to sit in front of my computer to watch a movie yet... for me it's worth $15 to be able to watch it from the couch. thanks....

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Hi Thingy,

I hear what you're saying there. Where did you buy it? Thank you,

-David Chipman

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The comparisons made are fact based comparisons, they do not intend that these people are the same or think alike, that is a logical falacy.

You can claim that both have toenails, and you can claim that both profited from the 9.11 bomb attacks. These are facts. To abuse the word "comparison" into meaning "exactly alike", is incorrect, and rhetorical.

So yes, you can put anything side by side, and compare what can be compared.

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What they were comparing was the ideologies which were both essentially nihlistic and comparing the fact that both sides use myths and falsehoods to perpetuate fear among their respective populations. And the 1980s neoconservative movement was among the scariest eras that the United States has ever lived through. I don't have a problem comparing Wolfawitz to Bin Laden and Zuwahari.

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[deleted]