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#401 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Aug 2010
Posts: 9,620
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No, this is just flat wrong.
Remember that article on fallacies? Right at the top of the article was a note that they omitted "formal fallacies", i.e. fallacies in deductive logic. Appeal to authority and other common fallacies are considered informal fallacies, tied almost exclusively to inductive reasoning. (Nonetheless, they are also called "logical fallacies", as Copi does.)
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And, of course, it is foolish to pretend this is how we reason. We see a pattern in nature often enough, we conclude that it probably holds generally and see whether we could find a counterexample.
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P(All swans are white | I've seen 275 swans, all white).
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Snip rest, since you're changing the topic. Let's settle our introduction to logical fallacies first. |
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#402 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Feb 2015
Posts: 5,497
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I am.
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"Ideas are also weapons." - Subcomandante Marcos "We must devastate the avenues where the wealthy live." - Lucy Parsons "Let us therefore trust the eternal Spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unfathomable and eternal source of all life. The passion for destruction is a creative passion, too!" - Mikhail Bakunin |
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#403 |
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Location: Monkey
Posts: 44,770
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One cannot expect wisdom to flow from a pumpkin. |
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#404 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Feb 2015
Posts: 5,497
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"Ideas are also weapons." - Subcomandante Marcos "We must devastate the avenues where the wealthy live." - Lucy Parsons "Let us therefore trust the eternal Spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unfathomable and eternal source of all life. The passion for destruction is a creative passion, too!" - Mikhail Bakunin |
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#405 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Aug 2010
Posts: 9,620
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Then you're very confused, because appeal to authority is not a fallacy in deductive logic, since it occurs only in the context of inductive arguments.
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Or do you just know better than logicians like Copi or those cited in WP?
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#406 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Feb 2015
Posts: 5,497
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A "formal fallacy" is a fallacy which makes an argument formally invalid (ie based on its logical form). For example (P => Q) => (~P => ~Q). Note how it doesn't matter what P or Q here are, the problem is solely with the form of the argument.
A "logical fallacy" is an argument such that the conclusion doesn't follow from the premises, so I suppose "formal fallacies" are a subset of "logical fallacies". The main point in all this is, however, that an appeal to authority is a fallacy in that its conclusion doesn't follow from its premises.
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"Ideas are also weapons." - Subcomandante Marcos "We must devastate the avenues where the wealthy live." - Lucy Parsons "Let us therefore trust the eternal Spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unfathomable and eternal source of all life. The passion for destruction is a creative passion, too!" - Mikhail Bakunin |
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#407 |
Ewige Blumenkraft
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Ivory Tower
Posts: 15,728
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Yeah, you can't prove a negative, but you could have easily dropped a word about my following request, instead you are deflecting. I did a simple google search for russia meddling voting machines leading me to hits #1: Washington Pest: Secret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win White House
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#2: New York Slimes: U.S. Officials Defend Integrity of Vote, Despite Hacking Fears
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Both post election, both insinuating that there are legitimate fears that Russia directly hacked the election, and both containing statements of officials, like I said, those who can be hold accountable for their words, that this is unlikely. And now we have it in that "report" explicitly, and the reason they state it is that it was (and will be in gullible circles) part of the campaign. Thanks for playing. EDIT: Strike that last sentence or at least don't take the tone too seriously (comes with the territory), Upchurch. I think you're a swell guy and could be honestly suffering from a bit of PTrumpSD™. I have even friends here in Germany who haven't recovered yet. |
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The Specter of Divisiveness |
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#408 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Aug 2010
Posts: 9,620
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No, this definition reduces it to purely deductive arguments once again. You ignore the fact that much of the time we use inductive arguments, and rightly so. We appeal to analogy, for instance, or we draw conclusions about white swans of the sort already mentioned. Most of our informal fallacies are about bad inductive arguments, arguments whose premises do not suffice to ensure that the conclusion is probable.
I don't know why you insist on missing this basic point. Perhaps you should look up inductive argument.
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16/64 = 1/4, because it works, don't it? I think we're done here. You have an addled misunderstanding of basic critical thinking and it's clear we're not getting closer to fixing that. |
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#409 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Feb 2015
Posts: 5,497
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That's peculiar, I just gave you a deductive argument which was invalid because of employing an appeal to authority.
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"Ideas are also weapons." - Subcomandante Marcos "We must devastate the avenues where the wealthy live." - Lucy Parsons "Let us therefore trust the eternal Spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unfathomable and eternal source of all life. The passion for destruction is a creative passion, too!" - Mikhail Bakunin |
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#410 |
Master Poster
Join Date: Sep 2016
Posts: 2,326
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The key difference here is independent sources who offer premises towards a conclusion and can be tested against each other, tested against physical evidence (archeological discoveries proving places Hannibal is purported to have been did exist at the time period in question). Corroboration is a valuable tool in assessing legal-historical arguments (where repeatable testing is not an available form of support).
Sometimes the other evidence can reveal how a source might be correct through a certain lens of interpretation that a plain reading would be misleading to take at face value. Homer's epics have truth to them and there's been remarkable increases in physical and recorded evidence to support events that were portrayed in them. In another example is the proposal that Moses parting the Red Sea really did happen, only it took place more as a low tide revealing a long spar to escape. Then some horrible timing for the pursuing Egyptian army who's heavy equipment got them mired in the muck of the spar and killed when the tide rolled back in. Take away the magic of silhouetted marine mammals backlit by moonglow through a wall of water and it suddenly seems a bit more plausible. That is not the case with the claims about Russia for those of us with no security clearance. We have merely been given the names of some people who hold certain sensitive governmental posts. Actually a lot of the broadest claims come from 'unnamed senior intelligence officials' if we want to be fair about it. So really we're at taking the word of an authority who claims that an unnamed authority claims that some evidence they have but won't show says their conclusion is correct. Also, yes the historical record of reliability of many of the agencies in question are an issue for me. I do not mean I dismiss or take the opposite positions they do in all cases, I only mean they do not carry enough weight to base conclusions on. They have value in being evaluated as part of a broader body of evidence for testing against each other (as described in the Hannibal example) or potentially interpreting from the kind of lens they have shown a tendency to see things through. Hell, there's almost no media publications I read without a sense of their tendencies and an attempt to both read it plain and 'decode' the bias. |
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#411 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Aug 2010
Posts: 9,620
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Sure, all of these considerations are relevant in considering whether an appeal to authority is strong. The argument in favor of Hannibal's existence has to be stronger than the argument regarding Russian involvement.
I nonetheless find the allegations more probable than not, but reasonable people can disagree. |
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#412 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Feb 2015
Posts: 5,497
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No, absolutely no. There are plenty of deductive frameworks available when classical logic won't suffice, including Bayesian inference or any number of alternatives. There is no need to use heuristics and guesswork, and certainly not to then call it "logic".
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"Ideas are also weapons." - Subcomandante Marcos "We must devastate the avenues where the wealthy live." - Lucy Parsons "Let us therefore trust the eternal Spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unfathomable and eternal source of all life. The passion for destruction is a creative passion, too!" - Mikhail Bakunin |
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#413 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Feb 2015
Posts: 5,497
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Of course we can prove a negative, we prove negatives all the time.
"There does not exist an even natural number strictly greater than 2 which is prime." Oh no! What are we to do? It's a negative, we'll never be able to prove it! And even more generally, in any two-valued logic which includes elimination of double negation (which includes anything we'll ever use around here) there is absolutely no difference between proving a "negative" and proving a "positive". This entire "you can't prove a negative" thing is badly confused. |
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"Ideas are also weapons." - Subcomandante Marcos "We must devastate the avenues where the wealthy live." - Lucy Parsons "Let us therefore trust the eternal Spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unfathomable and eternal source of all life. The passion for destruction is a creative passion, too!" - Mikhail Bakunin |
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#414 |
Illuminator
Join Date: Jan 2010
Posts: 4,680
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The Australian Family Association's John Morrissey was aghast when he learned Jessica Watson was bidding to become the youngest person to sail round the world alone, unaided and without stopping. |
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#415 |
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Location: St. Louis, MO
Posts: 30,417
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"There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact." -- Sherlock Holmes. "You are the herp to my derp" -- bit_pattern |
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#416 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Feb 2015
Posts: 5,497
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phiwum, I've noticed there are perhaps a couple of misunderstandings:
When I said "there is no such thing as informal logic" I didn't mean that the field classified under "informal logic" doesn't exist but that it is not a branch of logic, and calling it logic is a misappropriation of the term. It should really be called something like "educated guesswork" which covers it much more accurately than pretending it to be a form of logic. When I said "who cares how we reason? We reason incorrectly all the time" I mean that a description of how people reason does not mean that the reasoning is correct. For example people reason by using confirmation bias, but just because that is "how we reason" doesn't mean an argument based on confirmation bias is correct. |
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"Ideas are also weapons." - Subcomandante Marcos "We must devastate the avenues where the wealthy live." - Lucy Parsons "Let us therefore trust the eternal Spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unfathomable and eternal source of all life. The passion for destruction is a creative passion, too!" - Mikhail Bakunin |
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#417 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Aug 2010
Posts: 9,620
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If you prefer to call it "critical thinking" rather than "informal logic", I have no complaints. Historically, of course, these topics have been a part of logic, though these days, when people think of logic, they think of the formal stuff.
I disagree that it is mere educated guesswork. I find the view that inductive reasoning must be done in a Bayesian setting[1] to be a fantastic fiction. On the contrary, it's appropriate to reason inductively, through analogy and also to appeal to trustworthy, informed authorities. This kind of thinking is what we do everyday. When my car makes a funny noise and I recall that this was a symptom of a bad starter last time I heard it, then I am doing informal inductive reasoning, and quite appropriately, too. You're right that we tend to reason poorly, but informal logic is prescriptive. It teaches one how to reason better, how to avoid fallacies and judge the relative strength of different informal arguments. That is the point of studying this subject. Very few students will do any serious technical work, but we hope that teaching them basic concepts of critical thinking will be useful to them on a daily basis.[2] [1] I did bungle the term "likelihood" earlier. [2] In practice, they forget everything they learned right after the final, of course. Except for the fallacies, which they misuse on web forums for the rest of their lives. I'm not fooling myself. |
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#418 |
Muse
Join Date: Apr 2008
Posts: 535
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Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, Mr. Trump’s White House chief-of-staff designate, conceded on Sunday that Russia was responsible for efforts to meddle in the 2016 presidential election but said Russia had done so in previous elections and “this is nothing new.”
“The fact that this particular hack was perpetrated by Russian entities is something that no one is disputing,” Mr. Priebus said in an interview on CBS. http://www.wsj.com/articles/divide-o...27381?mod=e2fb |
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There is nothing as deceptive as an obvious fact. |
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#419 |
![]() Join Date: May 2002
Location: St. Louis, MO
Posts: 30,417
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Tell me:
What is the moon made of? How do know? Have you been there yourself? Do vaccines cause autism? Have you conducted studies to confirm the consensus? Is Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity true? How would you know? Now, what do all these things have in common with the US intelligence community's report? |
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"There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact." -- Sherlock Holmes. "You are the herp to my derp" -- bit_pattern |
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#420 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Jan 2010
Posts: 11,411
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He should probably tell Donald Trump.
Not that the moron would listen. This reminds me quite a bit of AGW denial. The steps of denial are being followed closely. First, deny it completely. Second, admit that it happened, but claim it's natural/happens all the time. The third step will be, sure it happened, and it's really bad, but there's nothing we can do about it now. |
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Before you say something stupid about climate change, check this list. "If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. " Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies Vol. 1 |
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#421 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Nov 2010
Posts: 12,413
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The first set is information pursued through the scientific method.
The intelligence report is assembled by people who reject it. We have people that believe in lie detector tests (FBI), that torture works (CIA), and support working in an environment that completely precludes open peer review (NSA). Intelligence officials, like the police, are not seekers of truth. Then the report is getting filtered to us by congress which is filled with people that believe things such as a woman cannot get pregnant from rape. I was pretty open to the conclusions in the report. You have convinced me to reject the.. |
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#422 |
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Location: St. Louis, MO
Posts: 30,417
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"There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact." -- Sherlock Holmes. "You are the herp to my derp" -- bit_pattern |
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#423 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Nov 2010
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#424 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Aug 2010
Posts: 9,620
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So change the examples to the existence of Hannibal, or of some minor pre-Socratic philosophers. History isn't done by scientific method (at least not this sort of history), but by examining testimonies and stories.
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You may have different opinions or find other reasons more compelling. Not every disagreement of this sort can be resolved. |
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#425 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Nov 2010
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#426 |
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Location: St. Louis, MO
Posts: 30,417
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"There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact." -- Sherlock Holmes. "You are the herp to my derp" -- bit_pattern |
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#427 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Nov 2010
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#428 |
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Location: St. Louis, MO
Posts: 30,417
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"There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact." -- Sherlock Holmes. "You are the herp to my derp" -- bit_pattern |
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#429 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Nov 2010
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#430 |
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Location: St. Louis, MO
Posts: 30,417
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"There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact." -- Sherlock Holmes. "You are the herp to my derp" -- bit_pattern |
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#431 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Nov 2010
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#432 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Aug 2010
Posts: 9,620
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I understood that you focused on an unfortunate feature of his examples, easily rectified with other examples.
In fact, that relativity was allegedly confirmed scientifically makes little difference to his point. As far as you and I are concerned, we only know this, too, through testimony. If it is correct, then it is conceivable that we could eventually train ourselves enough to evaluate the data, but that too is a form of testimony. It is barely possible that we could redo some of the experiments which serve to confirm relativity, but you and I know that we will not do that, that we are instead happy to take the word of scientists on this matter. |
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#433 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Nov 2010
Posts: 12,413
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There is more to it than that. The process itself of science (even the methods in social sciences) is understandable and sets guideposts that make it easier to assess adherence and consensus.
That simply doesn't exist in law enforcement and intelligence. Everything points to them operating in the exact opposite manner. |
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#434 |
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Location: St. Louis, MO
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"There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact." -- Sherlock Holmes. "You are the herp to my derp" -- bit_pattern |
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#435 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Nov 2010
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#436 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Aug 2010
Posts: 9,620
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I don't know what you mean by assessing adherence and consensus in science, or what that has to do with Upchurch's point that you and I are very content to appeal to authority on a daily basis.
When did Columbus first land in the "new world"? Damn straight I'll accept the claims of history books, absent some clearly compelling evidence not to. (When it comes to questions of a more political nature, publishers of commonly available textbooks feel some pressure to give a patriotic view and so should be treated more carefully, of course.) Look, Bob The Coward, if you are not disputing the fact that appeal to authority can be an acceptable form of argument in certain situations, then you have no beef with Upchurch. You're merely confusing issues by responding to him. |
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#437 |
Philosopher
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#438 |
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Location: St. Louis, MO
Posts: 30,417
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"There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact." -- Sherlock Holmes. "You are the herp to my derp" -- bit_pattern |
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#439 |
Illuminator
Join Date: Nov 2006
Posts: 3,051
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BTW, the classified 2002 Iraq intelligence evaluation was finally declassified in 2015, and we now know that BushCo misled the country about what was in there. It's full of caveats and disclaimers that, while we knew a lot about the previous programs which Saddam said were discontinued, there was little confidence in the sources and intel about any possible current WMD programs. But BushCo simply ignored those doubts and presented speculation as fact because the neocons controlling Bush's puppet strings badly wanted to invade Iraq.
Is Obama also misleading us about the confidence in the classified evidence? The only way I know to find out is to have a full Congressional investigation, but Trump apologists and sycophants prefer willful ignorance so they can maintain their personal incredulity. Protecting the Boy King's fragile ego is more important to them than protecting the country. |
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#440 |
Master Poster
Join Date: Jun 2007
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