The US has no democracy

A lady in Skypeland claimed that the US and the UK do not have democracies since they did not individually poll the citizens about going to war in Iraq. We had a difficult time getting her to understand what the difference was between a direct democracy and a representative democracy.

This lady was from Morocco, but had lived in the UK for 14 years, she said. We told her that the US Senate and House of Representatives had voted to support the war in Iraq, and the war also had support from the US administration.

She claimed over and over that the UK parliament had never voted to go war in Iraq. We asked for evidence. She said she did not have it and did not have time to do it. We said she certainly had time to spread wrong information, didn't she?

Thankfully, the Iraqi in the room quickly found a website demonstrating that the entire story this woman was spewing was wrong:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2862749.stm

We caught the lady from Morocco in a few other misstatements and misunderstandings as well. For example, she claimed that she had followed the First Gulf War, which lasted from August 1990 to February 1991, on Al Jazeera. However, Al Jazeera had only been founded in 1996. When confronted by this, she claimed it did not matter since the broadcast was in Arabic. Hmm...that makes a lot of sense...

People tried to point out to this lady that although she was very cavalier with the facts and her statements, she was willing to argue passionately for them and was even angry or combative if others disagreed with her. She was spreading false information. When asked for evidence, she always claimed she did not have the time to get the evidence or the facts and it was too much trouble. The problem is, some of her claims are the kinds of statements that spread more hatred and misunderstanding and can lead to more death on all sides.