US House votes not to set timetable for withdrawl

[Pangloss]

Please provide a link to a definition of the phrase "false pretenses" that precludes the knowledge of the perpetrator.

 

I've not accused you of taking an ideological line. You quoted my response to bascule, not to you. Please review forum practices and read more carefully before replying.

[KLB]

Anyway, yeah, I need to watch the rest of it, but it does look like a pretty good assessment. Of course, unless there's some great relevation waiting for me in the denouement, it doesn't PROVE that false pretenses were used, but it certainly supports that opinion[/url'].

And this is what political debate is all about.

 

It clearly and explicitly stops short of proving that they knew the intelligence was wrong. And it also supports the notion that they thought the intelligence was right, and were simply mistaken.

But it also shows that they believe only what they wanted to believe and ignored all intelligence that ran counter to their preconceived conclusions. They forced the intelligence to fit what they believed. They did not form their beliefs based on what the intelligence showed. In the scientific world I believe this is called pseudoscience. Should we be basing our decision to go to war based on pseudoscience?

[KLB]

Please provide a link to a definition of the phrase "false pretenses" that precludes the knowledge of the perpetrator.

The perpetrator in this case was not an individual. It was an entire administration, a collective political organism if you will that had a specific agenda from the beginning (even before 9/11), which was to go to war with Iraq.

 

The administration had the evidence it needed to know that the information they were using was bad and entities within the administration tried very hard to make sure that the leadership of the administration knew that the information was false and/or unreliable. The leadership (Dick Cheney), however, kept rejecting any information that did not fit the agenda and promoted any evidence that supported the agenda to go to war even when such information was completely unvetted, unreliable and/or known to be from bad sources. In fact much of the "evidence" was complete hearsay from a single completely unreliable source that had been discredited by the intelligence sources around the world. There was no collaborating evidence for many of the claims and only a single source of hearsay was relied upon on many instances. Another source of "key" intelligence was only acquired after the individual had been "rendered" to Egypt and then severely tortured (all of this is in the afore mentioned Frontline documentary).

 

In his efforts to get intelligence that supported what he wanted to prove, Dick Cheney went so far as to create a secret intelligence service within the Department of Defense and to completely cut off the CIA. When it was pointed out that the CIA had no intelligence assessment in regards to Iraq, the CIA was forced to produce a document in a few weeks that normally takes months or years to produce and any information that Dick Cheney did not like was excluded from the assessment. So, instead of being an unbiased assessment of the best available information, the intelligence assessment was a rubberstamp of what Dick Cheney wanted to prove.

 

Did Dick Cheney really believe what he told us? Yes he probably did, but only because of willful ignorance to all of the intelligence available, a blatant rejection of any intelligence that brought into question the validity of his agenda, which was to invade Iraq.

 

To me when an administration undertakes efforts as a collective organism to exclude contrary intelligence so that the head of that administration can claim plausible deniability, it is "false pretenses", because there was a collective effort to distort the facts and intelligence and to squelch any intelligence that "undermined" the objectives of the administration.

 

For the sake of this debate am I willing to concede that false pretenses basically means to intentionally deceive? Sure, but it doesn't negate my usage of it. I have by providing evidence that still supports the use of this phrase even using Pangloss's more narrow definition. That evidence is that the administration as a whole did suppress good intelligence that brought into question all of the administration's claims and relied on unsubstantiated evidence simply because the administration had an objective to go to war with Iraq (even before 9/11) and it was unwilling to look at any evidence that brought into question the validity of that objective and it promoted as undeniable proof any evidence that supported their agenda even if that intelligence was know to be completely unreliable. It was a willful act to hide the truth, this is the sprit of the meaning of "false pretenses".

 

Here is a very important question. Is there any practical difference between willfully lying about what one knows and willfully avoiding information that might undermined what one is trying to prove?

 

You quoted my response to bascule, not to you. Please review forum practices and read more carefully before replying.

If I slipped the wrong name in a quoted statement, my apologies, it was a slip of the keyboard so to speak. I always try to cite the proper poster. If you point out the error in citation, I'd be happy to fix it.

[Pangloss]

Well, I don't want to belabor the point, and sometimes I'm accused (perhaps rightfully so) of fixating on minutiae, which is really not my intent. The main points I wanted to make would be these:

 

1) I certainly agree that the Wikipedia is not an authoritative source, and as we have discussed here many times, it should not be used as such in this forum. We have established, however, that it may be used to inform other readers of background information and to suggest a kind of "starting point" for their own investigations. It may also be used for simple definitions. Those are our guidelines, and I expect you to respect them if you're going to dwell here with us (which I hope you continue to do).

 

2) I understand and support what you're saying about the issue, and as I mentioned before I have no problem with your opinion. I don't happen to share your conclusion, but I respect it. I don't think you're a crazed lunatic or an ideologue. We've had this discussion many times here, and I've posted many times along the lines of "you may well be right" on this subject (most notably after I read Woodward's Plan of Attack last year).

 

3) At risk of making this thread too much about our argument and not enough about the issue, I think something you'll figure out when you've been here a while is that I try to skew the debate here (in the Politics sub-board) to be as objective and open-minded as possible, mainly because the Internet is chock full of forums where hasty conclusions are given truck. This forum being about science, I feel (as do the other admins and mods) that the highest possible standard of objectivity and non-partisanship should be maintained when it comes to statements of fact, definitions, laws of science, legal matters, and so forth.

 

To that end, I felt that a point needed to be made that there is a difference between stating that the administration might have committed a deceit, and stating that it had knowingly done so. I recognize that there is a language problem here, in that people often express opinions in the form of statements, and I try to recognize them as such, but I believe it's important to distinguish between mere expressions of opinion, and occasions when our members state what other people are expected to believe. When I sense that it might be one of the latter times, I generally open my mouth to remind everyone of that tricky-to-define, but very important, boundary.

 

I hope that clears up where I'm coming from, but if you have any questions I'll be happy to try and answer them.

 

 

Getting back to the subject, to answer your question... well let me quote it directly:

 

Is there any practical difference between willfully lying about what one knows and willfully avoiding information that might undermined what one is trying to prove?

 

Nope, and I think that's a fair question. I don't think it's one that's been entirely answered yet. Frontline and Woodward's book didn't answer it, they simply showed where the answer may lie. More information is needed in order to answer the "deception question" definitively. I can elaborate further on this if you would like.

 

 

They did not form their beliefs based on what the intelligence showed. In the scientific world I believe this is called pseudoscience. Should we be basing our decision to go to war based on pseudoscience?

 

Very nicely put! I applaud your comparison.

[Pangloss]

If I slipped the wrong name in a quoted statement' date=' my apologies, it was a slip of the keyboard so to speak. I always try to cite the proper poster. If you point out the error in citation, I'd be happy to fix it.[/quote']

 

No, what happened was that I followed up a post to you with another post to Bascule on a completely different subject. The posts in question are numbered 47 and 48 in this thread, if that helps. Post #47 was to you, and post #48 was to Bascule. But you thought Post #48 was to you, and you quoted it and responded to it, thinking that it was addressed to you.

 

It's a common mistake amongst newer members, and nobody, myself included, will hold it against you.

[KLB]

No' date=' what happened was that I followed up a post to you with another post to Bascule on a completely different subject. The posts in question are numbered 47 and 48 in this thread, if that helps. Post #47 was to you, and post #48 was to Bascule. But you thought Post #48 was to you, and you quoted it and responded to it, thinking that it was addressed to you.

 

It's a common mistake amongst newer members, and nobody, myself included, will hold it against you. [/quote']

 

Oh I see it now, all I can say is: D'oh!

 

I don't do that too often in forums... I hope.

 

My apologizes.

[bascule]

Stop with the distractions and just admit you were wrong.

 

So wait, calling into question the costs of the war is a red herring in an argument about its sustainability? Zuh?

 

Seriously, you're shouting red herring and shifting the burden of proof here. I don't think I've done any of those things, and I think the sagging value of the dollar and the widening US trade deficit (which with a sagging dollar should be narrowing, should it not?) are some pretty sound indicators of the economic unsustainability of the war.

 

I post here fairly infrequently because you're something of a vitriol bilge pump. If you're going to accuse me of logical fallacies, you better pick ones that are applicable to my arguments.

 

I still stand by my original point: the Iraq war is unsustainable. Go ahead and argue that that's irrelevant; that's a sound argument. Claiming it's sustainable, and my reasoning is flawed without something to counter my arguments beyond specious claims of fallacies is not.

[Pangloss]

What arguments? You haven't made any, you just stated that it's the case, end of story.

 

I didn't say you were wrong in questioning the cost of the war, or even in stating that it's unsustainable. You've not provided any evidence that it is, so what you're wrong about is in stating factually that the war is unsustainable.

 

You're more than welcome to your opinion. Mine differs. Welcome to Square One. As I said originally, good luck with that approach. Doesn't seem to have accomplished much, has it?