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Cyrano

(15,035 posts)
Fri May 15, 2015, 11:17 AM May 2015

“Mistakes were made”

Richard Nixon was pardoned

America elected Ronald Reagan president – twice

The Supreme Court appointed George Bush president in 2000

Lies led America into invading Iraq

The presidency was stolen in Ohio in 2004

Torture was allowed under the label “enhanced interrogation”

Cheney/Bush et al have not been prosecuted for war crimes

The Supreme Court said that “money is speech”

The Supreme Court gutted the voting rights act


That’s about 40+ years of “mistakes.” How many more can we survive?

(And I'm sure you have plenty more "mistakes" to add.)

9 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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Ichingcarpenter

(36,988 posts)
1. I would add as far as 'mistakes were made'' in my lifetime
Fri May 15, 2015, 11:32 AM
May 2015

Operation paperclip

JFK assassination...

gulf of tonkin resolution ...


invasion of cambodia

operation condor

watergate

october surprise


iran contra


nafta

patriot act

Bora Bora......................... yes the list is long and sad




 

OnyxCollie

(9,958 posts)
3. “Mistakes” and “Failure”
Fri May 15, 2015, 01:40 PM
May 2015
“Mistakes” and “Failure”
http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/03/mistakes-and-failure/

The evidence is obvious. All one needs to do is look at the winners and losers. Let’s do the losers first because that’s quickest: the losers are the people, the 99%, in their hundreds of millions – their murdered families, shattered lives and ruined countries.

On the other hand the 1% have made vast fortunes from western foreign policy and secured for themselves power and glory. There are all the arms-makers and dealers for a start, the scum of the earth who have always showered themselves with riches by selling death and destruction to anyone who’ll buy it – and there’s never any shortage of customers. Ideally these subhuman monsters sell their death and destruction to both sides in a conflict. Then there are the bankers who, as a species, are not very much further up the food-chain than arms-makers. Their vast profits come from arranging loans – mainly to puppet governments in the form of “aid”, “aid” which must be spent buying from approved one percenters, obviously. There are a whole multitude of other corporations – the creatures of the 1% – drooling in the wings of western foreign policy initiatives, waiting to sink their fangs into juicy “aid” contracts: the construction companies profiteering by jerrybuilding infrastructures shattered by the products of the arms-makers; energy and utility companies poised like vultures to monopolise control of ruined energy supplies and communications; “security” companies ready to protect all the assorted scavengers; mining companies and agricultural monstrosities ready to loot any natural resources… and so the list goes on.

Then, of course, there are the mighty organs of state – the military and so-called “intelligence” services, organs of state which have absolutely no interest or desire in seeing a peaceful world. No general in his right mind wants a smaller army or less of the planet’s real estate to spread out over and seek new wars in. No spymaster worth his salt ever pointed out the fact that his trade serves very little practical purpose whatsoever (certainly not as far as the 99% are concerned), or bothers to remind anyone that today’s great empire somehow managed to grow to such an extent that it could take over the world without the need of any formal “intelligence” services at all. And there is, of course, the mainstream media who love nothing more than a war, and have never in their entire history let the truth interfere with a “good story”. The very last thing the one percenters who run all these great corporations and institutions want to see are foreign policies which would allow the 99% to quietly run their own spaces in their own quiet way.

If all this were not quite enough evidence of why the “mistakes” and “failures” of western foreign policy are not, in fact, mistakes and failures at all, we could always pose the question about secrecy. If the foreign policies of our trusted leaders were for good and noble reasons, why do they need to maintain such secrecy about their actions? Why do they need to ensure their records must remain hidden for decades into the future? Why do they have to victimise those who would try to spread a little light on those actions – people such as Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, and Edward Snowden? Why do ordinary citizens have to have their every movement tracked and their every conversation spied upon whilst those who would try to reveal to us the actions of our trusted leaders must live their lives as political prisoners or persecuted fugitives?

Saying that western foreign policy is “mistaken” and a “failure” fails to recognise the real nature of western foreign policy. Our great trusted leaders are not interested in acting in the best interests of people living in foreign countries, and they never have been; they’re not even interested in acting in the best interests of their own people, let alone those living thousands of miles away. Calling these things mistakes and failures suggests previously held noble intentions, intentions which have sadly failed to materialise this time – intentions which, in fact, never existed.

lpbk2713

(42,757 posts)
4. The entire Y2K Florida election was a travesty. Everyone involved should be ashamed.
Fri May 15, 2015, 01:45 PM
May 2015


And we should never forget JEB BUSH was Governor of Florida at
the time and he wants to run for President of the United States.


Botany

(70,504 posts)
5. Don't forget Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force that told oil drillers that they didn't need .....
Fri May 15, 2015, 02:02 PM
May 2015

..... emergency kill switches for their deep water rigs.

Or that the Lousiana National Guard was in Iraq w/their amphibious vehicles when
Hurricane Katrina hit.

Mistakes were made.

 

jtuck004

(15,882 posts)
6. The full title is "Mistakes Were Made, But Not By Me". It is an excellent read,
Fri May 15, 2015, 02:06 PM
May 2015

eye-opening.

I don't mind mistakes - they are necessary to progress and accomplishment.

Not learning from them, denial. Well...




https://books.google.com/books?id=vZkGNIpAsTEC&lpg=PP1&dq=mistakes%20were%20made%20but%20not%20by%20me&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=mistakes%20were%20made%20but%20not%20by%20me&f=false

Seemed germane to your subject.

Response to jtuck004 (Reply #6)

iscooterliberally

(2,860 posts)
8. Not to sound like a broken record or anything, but..
Fri May 15, 2015, 02:11 PM
May 2015

One huge mistake was the controlled substances act of 1970. The entire world could have done without that, and without the DEA.

1939

(1,683 posts)
9. Two big Democratic mistakes
Fri May 15, 2015, 02:21 PM
May 2015

LBJ's unified budget which permitted looting of the trust funds and which disguised the real problem of deficits for a couple of decades.

Failure to index the income tax brackets for inflation which gave enhanced revenues in the short term but which killed the consensus for a graduated income tax over time as inflation and the advent of the two income household drove ordinary Americans into tax brackets designed for the wealthy.

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