Comments on: Lies, Damned Lies, and Ted Rall. Telling Lies.

By: Ian

Ian — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 11:45:18 +0000

Oh lord. Ted Rall has the 9/11 conspiracy theorists fighting his fights for him now.

BTW, NSPD-9 was apparently the document that finally, too late, reflected Richard Clarke’s eight-month cry in the wilderness about the dangers of al-Qaeda, which the Bush administration ignored as long as it could. Clarke was recommending we make a move against al-Qaeda as early as Jan 25, 2001, and he no interest in building a pipeline across Afghanistan.

By: Benedict@Large

Benedict@Large — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 10:53:39 +0000

P.S. You really should check out NSPD-9, signed by Bush seven days BEFORE 9/11. It’s the official directive to Rumsfeld to get geared up for the Afghanistan War.

Did Bush know about 9/11 in advance, or was the war really about something else? Gotta be one of the two, and I don’t think either of us want it to be the first.

By: Benedict@Large

Benedict@Large — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 10:17:04 +0000

“What is unforgivable is allowing Rall to peddle the outright lie that the war was about building a Turkmenistan—Pakistan oil pipeline…”

No, it was about getting bin Laden (we didn’t) and eradicating poppies (largest harvests ever). It wasn’t about TAPI (though the deal has just been re-inked), and the Canadians are all pissed off about guarding the proposed route for nothing. (Yeah, I know, the Canadian government denies their troops are doing that, but what country wants to admit they just got chumped by the US?)

Give me a break. If your piece was worth anything, you’d think you could at least have gotten it published in CityBeat. Oh, I forgot … they have editors there.

By: Caution

Caution — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 11:16:05 +0000

I’m female. Y’know girls read Registan too! Also, I live and work in the Central Asian region (‘though I’m at home in Europe at the moment for hols) and I’ve studied Central Asian history at post grad level.

By: johnnie b. baker

johnnie b. baker — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 12:10:02 +0000

And San Diego City Beat isn’t even the main San Diego weekly. If this is where he’s getting published now, things are obviously not looking good for him.

By: johnnie b. baker

johnnie b. baker — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 12:09:53 +0000

And San Diego City Beat isn’t even the main San Diego weekly. If this is where he’s getting published now, things are obviously not looking good for him.

By: Mark Hamm

Mark Hamm — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 18:21:53 +0000

It sounds like ‘rationality’, ‘caution’, and ‘tictoc’ might be the same guy.
I enjoy Bourdain’s show, he’s such a big baby but soldiers on. ‘Sawdust mixed with urine’, I didn’t know they had a Dominoes Pizza in Central Asia. In fact a food tour of CA would be great.

By: tictoc

tictoc — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 17:31:51 +0000

Joshua, you also lied when you stated in a previous post that American soldiers at Manas airbase have killed several Kyrgyzstanis — even the article you linked to said there was one killing. Guess you didn’t bother to do the research.

Also, it’s ridiculous to say that Rall doesn’t know what he’s talking about because he doesn’t like the food. Most Westerners complain about the food — the lack of variety and the chunks of fat and oily puddles. Your stay there must have been very brief if you can call the food incredible.

Rall is bombastic, but post-Akaev Kyrgyzstan has been chaotic (although anarchy is perhaps an overstatement.) This is a country where someone was able to illegally seize a coal mine and control it for almost a year. Leaders of opposition parties have been stabbed and shot at, members of parliament murdered, and organized crime figures play a visible role in politics. I suppose it’s better to call these guys crime bosses than warlords since the word warlord brings to mind running street battles between guys in Toyota pickup trucks. Certainly, politically motivated violence in Kyrgyzstan has been confined and doesn’t affect large segments of the population.

I’m not defending Rall, but you do the same thing he does, just in another direction.

By: Joshua Foust

Joshua Foust — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 15:59:52 +0000

“Caution,” Rall got dropped from the New York Times, Washington Post, MSNBC, and Yahoo after he wrote an article and cartoon basically calling Pat Tillman (the NFL player killed as an Army Ranger in Afghanistan) a bloodthirsty moron. Many months later, after that scandal had passed and Tillman’s family revealed that he enjoyed Chomsky and was opposed to the Iraq War, Rall even (finally) issued a retraction… on his blog.

One can argue with my tone, but none of it rises to defamation.

By: caution

caution — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 15:51:53 +0000

That’s a matter of opinion. My point is that a court would want to see factual evidence to support Josh’s assertion that Rall “got fired from most of them for being an asshole who lies about people he never bothered to research. ”
This is defamation proper if any small part of this sentence is not entirely correct.
I’m concerned that Registan the blog will suffer as a result of some over zealous willy waving. Josh’s article is a valid opinion but some of the other statements in this thread go beyond the point of fair comment and are the stuff of expensive court cases.