Tim Blair

It looks like Weasley Clark has run into the same problem he had in the military. Somewhere (can't find the cite) someone said Clark was only unliked by three groups in the military: Those he served under; those he served alongside; and those he served over. Looks like civilians pretty much agree. (Plus that creepy non-blink thing is pretty obvious if the camera stays on him long.)

Note the use of the weasel words "up to". By stating it this way, they can throw out any wildass figure they want to and still technically be correct.

The way it's worded 'up to' means that they were absolutely correct.

There were between 0 and 1,000,000 deaths.

I hereby predict that there will be between 0 and 1,000,000,000,000 deaths on earth due to an alien attack from mars some time this year.

Do you think I can get in the paper too?

Can we start chanting:

"Lawyers tell lie,
Iraqis didn't die"

Ready? On 3...

Also from the letter: “From what we know of the likely civilian devastation of the coalition’s war strategies, there are strong arguments that an attack on Iraq may involve the commission of both war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

The highly educated, sophisticated and condescending members of the “Australian Lawyers for Human Rights” preferred the humanitarian, non-criminal record of Saddam to the American coalition. I wonder which side the Iraqi people were on?

Do you think I can get in the paper too?

Not a bloody chance! Even though you approximated the death toll in the correct leftist form you made the mistake of specifying a definitive martian attack. What you should of said was something like "... people will die as a result of George W Bush sneaking around to their homes in the middle of the night and stealing the oil out of their central heating tanks."

Remember! Everything, everywhere is George's fault - even those things that never happened.

Bugger. I was hoping there'd be a lecturer or two at my university (Queensland Uni of Technology) for me to pummel. Then again, just because they didn't sign this letter doesn't make them saints.

I'll pummel them all anyway, just to be sure.

None from my alma mater, Griffith Uni either. Maybe my ultra-left SRC was right when they were whingeing about it being the most profitable uni in Australia.

Must be the reason my uncle worked there.

The usuual bunch of whingeing ratbags - Saddam's running dogs - whose hatred for John Howard overwhelms the normal empirical approach to consideration of issues you might reasonably expect from academics.

Mao had it right: clear out the universities and force these academic fatcats to go and work in factories and on farms at menial rates and for long hours, along side the ordinary people some of them claim to champion. A new concept of sabbatical leave. They might actually learn something, commonsense particularly, a subject not taught in universities.

This cultural revolution should also be applied to all ABC employees and public servants.

Only 250,000? Unfunny fat English low-rent Michael Moore wannabe Mark Thomas said 500,000.

The UN predicts that figures for Iraqi civilian casualties in a war will come to roughly 500,000...Even though these deaths may be well-intentioned, freedom-loving deaths.

"clear out the universities and force these academic fatcats to go and work in factories and on farms at menial rates and for long hours ..."

How about we just shoot anyone who wears glasses?

I teach at a university. I worked as a kitchen-hand (getting up at 4:45 to cut up frozen chooks under the supervision of a chain-smoking hag) to put myself through university. I picked fruit to put myself through university. I worked jobs that included shifts until 11 pm on weekday and weekend nights to put myself through university.

Do you think, if you asked the Waterside Workers or others who wear blue jackie howes to work, that they'd have been pro- or anti-Saddam?

By god, there are a lot of fools and delinquents parading as lecturers and professors. And some wonder why the University has become fit for Irish of bog descent ?

Hey Unc,

Did you sign the open letter? If so, you'd better get back in the kitchen chopping up the chooks, because you'll be more use there. Also, get your glasses checked, they're obviously affecting your thinking.

Wasn't Cujo a big dumb dog? Listen doofus - the academics are correct in a non-specific way - no need for an apology. Unlike yourself, however, as you miss the point completely - you *could* say that there will be "0 and 1,000,000,000,000 deaths on earth" due to starvation, war, car accidents, SARS or whatever - NOT AN ALIEN ATTACK FROM MARS. Moron.

Frosty-boy - why you dribblin ?

If I say the spittle runnin down the left side o you chin, you likely come back, quick as a flash, like, real clever, and say - "No it aint, it runnin down the RIGHT side o my chin - take that!". Man you a clever cat. Dumbass.

FreddyBoy,

Lay off of Unc man, that cat is like, Uncle Harvey Milk !

Harvey Milk a hero FreddyBoy, and he got a Drama School in New Yawk named after him and stuff.

Not his fault he comments stoopid - he dead, remember!

Hey Milkman, just coz you chopped a few chickens to get through university, big deal! I worked as a builders labourer while doing my uni course, so what??

Anyway, I learnt from my experiemce, but you obviously didn't, which is why you're hiding out in that sunset home for the terminally incapable/unemployable/socially unacceptable, aka the university, permanently tenured, overpaid and free to snipe at the rest of the world. Stop with the self-pity and get a life!

Hey Arik, don't knock the fruity boy man, we is brothers aint we?

Freddyboy and Arik,

No, I didn't sign that letter. Great to see you can know so much about me from one posting.

Here's a thought: take ten seconds with Google to find out what I actually believe, hey, before you crank up the Big Personal Insult Machine.

I don't lurk here because I want to read a conservative/ libertarian mirror of IndyMedia. I lurk here because the majority of Tim's readers can discuss competing ideas without getting ad hominem about the people who express 'em.

Oh, yeah, still awaiting that answer to my question (as distinct from fill-in-the-blanks personal sledging): How many Builders Labourers, wharfies or forestry workers do you think would have opposed the Iraq war?

I supported, and still support, the Iraq War. All I'm saying is, don't get too carried away with self-flattering generalisations. (I know, an easy temptation.)

So, let me understand: Tim believes that a government is not not accountable to the public for making mistakes about claimed facts on the basis of which it started a war, but a bunch of academics should be held accountable for a prediction made in a farcical "open letter".

erm ... one "not".

Academics lied, Iraqi's survived!

Freddyboy,
Sure we is brothers man. This here is a virtual brotherly hug {}.

Just brotherly Freddy ...

But hey, hasn't Unca Harvey got smart since he been shot dead ? What with he got tenure and he overpaid and doin all that snipin, man he got it made!

Boy I bet that guy shot him is mad as hell ...

Freddyboy, Arik:
Uncle Milk got a mention in one of Tim's columns saying hes been a member of Amnesty International for ten years, but now hes not so sure.

Its interesting how Uncle Milk describes himself as a 'lurker'. It may just be me, but I associate lurking with a very much seedier end of the net, down there in chat-rooms, cu-cme mirrors and usenet binaries ...

Mork, refer to the dictionary under the headings for Satire, Irony and Sarcasm to better understand the subtle nuances of calling partisan academic hyperbole "pre-war intelligence"

I look at thelist and think of Berkley. Inspite of that I have to side with UncleMilk.

When Rob said Mao was right he totally negated whatever drivel came afterward.

That is misleading tim. The post you have linked to at my site asks the question. It doesn't make a prediction. Poor form (again, I might add).

Tim, you pick out one wrong thing from that entire letter. Good for you. Did you keep your eyes closed while reading the rest so you wouldn't have to confront the uncomfortable fact that they were right most of the time while you were not?

This from the guy who wants some proof that Al Qaeda had anything to do with 9-11.

For the proprietor of a site that seems to be mainly based on discovering other people's mistakes, I would have thought it an important matter of principle that you admit your own errors when they are pointed out tim. Have you no shred of integrity?

CS, you asked if Clark was the candidate from heaven, then you spent that entire post going over his good points. Was that a secret code for "I don't think he's going to do well one way or another"?

I did a lot of things, but one thing I definitely didn't do was make a prediction. tim blair's comment is an honest mistake, I hope ... or he is a liar. He does himself no credit in not offering a prompt correction, as any decent journalist would.