And over here, we still have Mr. Strong, desperately avoiding fessing up to his lies. Let's follow the bouncing falsehoods, shall we? (All emphasis added from now on.)
Honesty is a concept lost on some people.
Yeah, that's just the lesson in morality I need from a pathological liar. Onward.
Take for instance one so-called "progressive blogger", Canadian Cynic who continues his campaign to brand me as a "serial liar".
Fine, let's split the difference and go with "pathological." Happy now? Now, here's where it gets entertaining:
Today CC writes this [emphasis added]:
Mr. Strong has repeatedly referred to (and continues to refer to) a "Democratic resolution for immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq." There is no such resolution, as you can read here.
Technically, he's right that no Democratic resolution was put to a vote, ...
Good boy, Bill. See? You really can admit you were wrong if you work at it. But ... oh oh ... that little flirtation with integrity was short-lived:
... but there was one which he even quotes on his blog.
Please, Bill, let's not start playing word games. There was, as you have already admitted, no Democratic resolution by any Democrat that called for an immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq. None. At all. That was the Republican resolution. For God's sake, can you just stop lying for once? Just this once? Please?
I mean, are you seriously trying to defend your dishonesty by simply stating, "There was a Democratic resolution, therefore I was right." Is that what you're saying? Anyway, Mr. Strong now makes a valid point:
Now this is interesting because CC is caught here in his own lie. He deliberately put the above words inside quotation marks, meaning that he is representing this as an exact quote from myself. I invite you to search this page for that exact phrase. You won't find it anywhere except in the above quotation taken from his blog.
And he's absolutely right -- you won't find that exact quote anywhere on his blog because it isn't there, and that was my screwup. I was trying to emphasize the core of the issue and what Mr. Strong was saying and, stupidly, I put that phrase in quotes instead of, say, in bold or italics which I should have.
So, having admitted to that, I can simply say, fine, take the quotes away and we're back to my original point -- Mr. Strong is still a liar and he is still misrepresenting what went down in the House of Representatives. Now, is he going to admit to that? Or is he going to hang his entire defense on my erroneous quotes which, I should point out, don't change the fundamentals of this debate even a little bit.
Now, here's the fun part, as Mr. Strong writes:
I said it was an "issue" raised by Democrat John Murtha, which it clearly was. At no time did I ever refer to vote on a "Democratic resolution", which it was not. I stated that it was the Republicans who "forced a vote" on this issue, which they did, although I didn't mention that they introduced their own resolution in order to do so.
That's right, Mr. Strong, you dishonestly didn't mention that, did you? In fact, this is what you wrote:
Republicans in the US House of Representatives finally had enough of the Democrats' tactics of false claims that "Bush lied" and forced a vote on an issue raised by Pennsylvania Democrat John Murtha calling for an immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq.
Obviously fed up with the lies, deception and hypocracy of the Democrats, Republicans described Murtha's proposal as as a "strategy of surrender" and forced the vote. The debate got pretty heated, but in the end the Dummocrats really had no choice.
I challenge anyone to read that original phrasing and claim that they knew what actually happened based on that. (This keeps coming back to what it means to "lie," doesn't it? "Hey, I never technically lied -- I just left out crucial information and let you draw your own completely incorrect conclusions. But, come on, that's not really a lie.")
[ADDENDUM: Sorry, I forgot to mention this the first time. Mr. Strong does in fact lie above when he refers to "an issue raised by Pennsylvania Democrat John Murtha calling for an immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq." As we all know by now, Murtha's resolution said nothing about an "immediate" withdrawal. Strong is flat-out lying here and there's no way he can spin that away.]
And, in one last spasm of wretched dishonesty, Mr. Strong redefines and quotes out of context, ignoring Rep. Murtha's actual wording in his resolution and, instead, seizing on Murtha's phrasing at a press conference thusly when he quotes Murtha as saying:
The United States will immediately redeploy -- immediately redeploy.
Strong highlights that phrase a couple more times, thereby concluding that what Murtha was proposing was an immediate yanking of every American soldier back from Iraq. Is that what Strong is implying that Murtha is suggesting here? Because a more careful reading of Murtha shows how dishonest Strong is yet again. We have Murtha in context, where I emphasize that Murtha is still making it clear that this is to be a gradual and not absolutely complete process:
"I believe with the U.S. troop redeployment the Iraqi security forces will be incentivized to take control. A poll recently conducted -- this is a British poll reported in The Washington Times -- over 80 percent of Iraqis are strongly opposed to the presence of coalition forces, and about 45 percent of Iraqi population believe attacks against American troops are justified. I believe we need to turn Iraq over to the Iraqis. I believe before the Iraqi elections, scheduled for mid-December, the Iraqi people and the emerging government must be put on notice. The United States will immediately redeploy -- immediately redeploy. No schedule which can be changed, nothing that's controlled by the Iraqis, this is an immediate redeployment of our American forces because they have become the target."
(...)
"My plan calls for immediate redeployment of U.S. troops consistent with the safety of U.S. forces, to create a quick reaction force in the region, to create an over-the-horizon presence of Marines, and to diplomatically pursue security and stability in Iraq."
See what happens when you actually read what someone says? Note how Murtha talks, not about yanking every single soldier out of Iraq on a moment's notice, but about putting the Iraqi people on notice "before the Iraqi elections," about redeploying "consistent with the safety of U.S. forces," and about leaving in place both a quick reaction force and a Marine presence. Gosh, isn't it exciting what you can learn when you aren't a lying sack of crap like Mr. Strong?
I could eviscerate the rest of Mr. Strong's swill but what's the point? What can one say about dishonest rubbish like this:
Actually, it always was a Democrat proposal as I have maintained from the start. It took a Republican resolution to bring it to a vote, but it was a Democtatic [sic] proposal. No change of story on my part here and another lie by CC exposed.
No, it wasn't always a Democrat proposal. It was initially a Democratic proposal that was ignored by the Republicans, who replaced it with a completely different proposal that even they voted against. But I'm guessing, at this point, that it's a waste of time trying to explain this to Bill anymore.
[SECOND ADDENDUM: Just in case you didn't parse Strong's bullshit above, let me emphasize what he wrote, emphasizing a single word: "it always was a Democrat proposal as I have maintained from the start. It took a Republican resolution to bring it to a vote..." Now, what exactly does the word "it" in italics above refer to?
To the original Democratic proposal? If so, then it's simply false to claim that the Republican resolution brought "it" to a vote since, as Mr. Strong has already admitted, that was not the resolution that was voted on, was it?
If, however, the word "it" refers to the Republican resolution, then it's dishonest to write that "it" was always a Democratic proposal since, again, Mr. Strong has already admitted that that's not what happened. Do I really need to explain this in any more detail? I mean, for anyone besides the Blogging Tories?]
I've had enough of this. Mr. Strong is welcome to return to posting dishonest shit on his site; I have better things to do. Anyone who reads Mr. Strong's prose and takes it seriously frankly deserves to remain terminally stupid. He's all yours. And you're welcome to him. What a thoroughly delightful public representative for the Blogging Tories.
BY WAY OF ANALOGY: It occurs to me that I can nicely explain Mr. Strong's dishonesty by way of a simple analogy. Strong continually tries to muddy the difference between the Democrats' and the Republicans' proposals by claiming that the GOP was only forcing a vote on an issue that was originally raised by the Dems, without admitting that the two proposals were stunningly different in content. How best to analogize this?
Say Mr. Strong and I are both at a town council meeting at which there is an open discussion on how to support the orphans at the local orphanage. Mr. Strong tables a motion for a 1/2 cent increase in the local sales tax to fund improvements to the orphanage.
I, on the other hand, reject his motion and table one of my own, proposing that all of the orphans be fed through a wood-chipper and used to grit the sidewalks after a heavy snowfall.
When the room explodes in outrage over my suggestion, I say simply that I was just forcing a vote on an issue that Mr. Strong raised in the first place. And, according to Mr. Strong's logic, I would be perfectly accurate. Using Mr. Strong's own words and with a simple substitution, I could get away with saying:
"It always was Mr. Strong's proposal as I have maintained from the start. It took my resolution to bring it to a vote, but it was Mr. Strong's proposal."
Leaving out, of course, the overwhelming difference in those proposals, which is exactly and precisely what Mr. Strong has been doing all this time.
Now do you get it?
Oh, Jesus. And wouldn't you know who crawls out from under his barrel to lend Mr. Strong his moral support. Words fail me.
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