I am not a conspiracy theorist

It is amazing how many "conspiracy theorists" are out there in Skypeland. Some even try to claim they are not conspiracy theorists, but then present something that amounts to nothing else but a conspiracy theory.

One young man who refused to tell us where he was from (always a bad sign) tried this tactic on us. He had a US accent but stumbled over his words. He eventually said he was from Canada and implied he was an immigrant from the Middle East, but this was not certain. He started out by telling us about "Why We Fight", a documentary about the US military industrial complex. He definitely claimed he was not a conspiracy theorist.

He used the standard tactics; he had no information or faulty information, he asked questions but would not allow anyone to answer and then complained about it, he dismissed any answers he received, he dismissed any data from universities and governments and reputable media sources, he dismissed personal accounts from US soldiers in the room and an Iraqi in the room, he spoke over anyone who disagreed, he only had data and views from very restricted anti-American and anti-military websites, he had huge gaps in his knowledge of history and current events, he was openly anti-Semitic, etc. When confronted with something he could not answer, he started to whine about how he was in an ugly room full of right wingers etc.

He claimed
*the US gets most of its oil from Canada (it does not)
*the US is not applying pressure to end the genocide in Darfur (it is)
*China is not involved in Darfur (he expressed shock when we said it)
*the US is dropping bombs currently on innocent civilians in Iraq (not)
*Sadam Hussein never used weapons of mass destruction (not knowing that he gassed the Kurds)
*Canada does not benefit at all from the US (not knowing it has a huge trade surplus with the US thanks to NAFTA and has a tiny military because the US protects it)
*Israel stole the land from the Palestinians (while admitting the Jews had been in the area for thousands of years ??)
*the military death toll in Iraq is worse than it was in Vietnam (it isn't)
*the US did not stop the genocide in the former Yugoslavia (it did)
*the US did not try to stop the trouble in Somalia (it did)

He did not know that the Russians had been in Afghanistan and the US had helped the Afghanis against the Russians. He did not know about the more than 10 years of sanctions and negotiations with Sadam Hussein before the war. He claimed we all just wanted to go to war to kill innocent civilians. He had his civilian death toll in Iraq incorrect, historically and currently. He claimed that the Iraqi who lives in Iraq knows much less about Iraq than he does. He did not know anything about the connection between the Black Hawk Down incident and Somalia. He claimed that the CNN reporter who took pictures of the incident was lying when he was interviewed about these Pullitzer Prize-winning photographs and their consequences. He claimed that all government and official information was incorrect. He contradicted himself. He had a pitiful knowledge of what was going on in the world, of dates, of what had gone on in recent history in the world. His knowledge of ancient history was just as bad.

He went on and on and on in a litany like a broken record. He would not listen to facts. He complained. He whined.

It is not that I do not agree about the military-industrial complex. However, when people take these sorts of arguments to extremes, and present them in a one-sided manner, they become silly and they discredit themselves and their causes.