In other news, no one believed the UK and US when they warned Ukraine for a Russian invasion because they lied about Iraq before. source
I don’t think states are fooled by those things. US can say “Iraq had nuclear weapons” and people can trust it, but states have somewhat competent intelligence agencies that will give their assessment.
The lies are for the pretense, to fool us.
Intelligence is good at motivations and trends but recently there’s been some major failures in projecting outcomes.
USA turning isolationist was predicted, it was however a faster and harder turn than projected.
Ukraine I think was projected to just turn out much like Putin wanted. A quick grab of the territories he considered disputed, he gets a nice show of force meanwhile Europe gets to suffer treaties to play nice with Russian economy again until next time that hopefully is in the far future while gearing up their own military might yet under USA’s wing.
The reality where Ukraine didn’t fold and Russia was exposed as a Paper Tiger and the majority of Europe as a Steel Garfield was in neither’s interest.
And the unjust thing is that who suffers is largely the smaller neighbours of Russia that have done their part and more, but are still globally seen as investment risk because the major players have shown that they’re quite willing to break rank in the name of self-interest.
Explanation: After following the USA into Afghanistan over the Taliban harboring the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks, France raised some serious questions about the Bush Administration proposing to attack Iraq next. Iraq was utterly uninvolved in the 9/11 attacks, and Saddam Hussein, shithead dictator though he was, was not ideologically aligned with the Taliban or Al-Qaeda and unlikely to offer them aid. For that matter, the excuse given by the Bush Administration - that Iraq was supposedly developing ‘weapons of mass destruction’ - was unconvincing and unsupported by the available evidence.
Because France was not willing to play dipshit regime change games with the Bush Administration, a frenzy was worked up amongst US conservatives about how awful France was, and there was a short-lived attempt to rename French Fries “Freedom Fries”.
France was right (it happens sometimes). US conservatives were wrong (I don’t even remember the last time they were right?). Saddam had no WMDs or WMD capacity, and the entire ordeal in Iraq turned into a clusterfuck that got a lot of fucking people killed for no good fucking reason. On top of that, it caused the situation in Afghanistan to deteriorate, both by the funneling of extant resources into invading Iraq, and by the international hostility (rightly) provoked by the US invasion of Iraq, giving the battered Taliban a new lease on life.
US conservatives were wrong (I don’t even remember the last time they were right?).
It doesn’t help that there is literally no belief or conviction that conservatives haven’t completely flip-flopped on in order to hurt brown people, from gun rights to small government to taxes.
Even if they ever were right about something, give it a short amount of time and they’ll have flipped to be wrong about it.
Well, they’re people that will literally shit themselves just to make [minority they currently hate] smell it. There is no reasoning or logic, just hate and the emotion that comes with it.
This also caused a minor diplomatic row with France, whose foreign minister had state publicly that the French didn’t care what Americans called their potatoes.
I’m more offended by that than the original name change to Freedom Fries™ 🍟
As we like to say in France, “on s’en bat les couilles”.
uh, you keep the fries then
gotta remember… onsen battles coooie. i slap my testicles at that.
The t is silent
US conservatives were wrong (I don’t even remember the last time they were right?)
AIRHORN
France was right (it happens sometimes)
Is France noticeably more often wrong than, for example, the UK or the US?
Nah, but it’s a longstanding internet tradition to make fun of France.
longstanding
internet[anywhere that speaks English] tradition to make fun of France.FTFY
e.g. (Simpsons, 1995):
as an english speaker who is proud of my french heritage it’s kind of weird, but hey, bring the cheese and pour the wine garçon.
