Now Condi is in on it…
Let’s see, how many logical fallacies can they toss out there?
[sub]sorry, this is sort of a cross post, but it fits better here[/sub]
What are the logical fallacies? As I understand it, Cheney is saying that the press keeps blurring the line between 9/11 and other contacts with al-Qaida. Like this:
Press: Was Saddam involved in 9/11?
Official: We have no knowledge of a link between Saddam and 9/11.
HEADLINE: Administration says no evidence of link between Saddam, al-Qaida!
Official: We never said that. There were links between al-Qaida and Iraq.
HEADLINE: “Administration says Saddam involved in 9/11!”
etc.
I wonder if the release of this report and the controversy between their position and Cheney’s is what prompted Putin to come forward and say that Russian intelligence had evidence that Saddam was planning terror attacks in the U.S. and against U.S. interests elsewhere. If that’s the case, and if those attacks didn’t specifically involve 9/11, might that be the evidence Cheney claimed they had that they couldn’t give to the commission? If there was an agreement to withold that information at the request of Russian intelligence, then only Putin could give it up.
Wasn’t Zarquawi fighting on the Kurds’ side against Sadaam Hussein?
So fighting against someone=relationship with that someone?
Logic is being so tortured, the soliers are posing thumbs up pictures alongside it.
Weasel language is the domain of the devious, deceitful and dishonest. It is that simple. After some two years of blowing the horn about Saddam and Osama and September 11, in the face of what appears to be a careful and researched conclusion from the 9/11 Commission, a creature of their own making, that there is no (credible evidence of a) collaborative connection between Saddam and Osama, after two years of making no effort to correct a wide perception that the Administration was claiming that Saddam was in some vague and unspecified way in cahoots with Osama in the September 11 attacks (a wide perception because is were deliberately creating that perception) our government comes forward and says, “Oh, we didn’t SAY THAT, or if we did, we didn’t MEAN THAT, and if you thought THAT is what we were saying you were just not paying attention. Really we meant something else. We can’t tell you what we really meant, however.”
Give me a break, already. A significant fraction of the American public thinks that Saddam had a finger in September 11. Where do you suppose THAT idea came from. For the Bush Administration and its GOP connected propaganda machine, maybe? If the Administration really meant something else don’t you suppose that these paragons of plain talk in the fine tradition of the brave and simple folk of the Old West, these disciples of the Cowboy Way, would have made some concerted effort to correct this erroneous impression? Really, don’t you?
Weasels. Weasels, all of ‘em. This bunch has lied, misrepresented and generally deceived my country into squandering its treasure, the blood if its soldiers, sailors, aircrew and Marines, and the credibility of the nation on a cracked brained adventure. If it is seditious to stand up on your hind legs and say so, so be it. The only thing that keeps the streets in front of the White House from being filled with frenzied mobs screaming “to the lamp posts,” is our innate civility.
As far as the President of Russia is concerned, do you really thing his statement, lacking in specifics as it is, is the consequence of altruism and a deep concern that the electorate of the United States benefit from his special knowledge?
Anybody around here whose Bullshit Meter is not going off has no sense of bullshit. The Administration just been caught (again) with its hand in the cookie jar. Now it says that it isn’t a cookie jar and that isn’t its hand. What are you going to believe, what Bush and the boys tell you or what you see with your lying eyes? Just how God damned gullible do these people think we are?
I really hope there wasn´t.
Leaders of 9/11 Panel Ask Cheney for Reports
Published: June 19, 2004
WASHINGTON, June 18 — The leaders of the Sept. 11 commission called on Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday to turn over any intelligence reports that would support the White House’s insistence that there was a close relationship between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.
The commission’s chairman, Thomas H. Kean, and its vice chairman, Lee H. Hamilton, said they wanted to see any additional information in the administration’s possession after Mr. Cheney, in a television interview on Thursday, was asked whether he knew things about Iraq’s links to terrorists that the commission did not know “Probably,” Mr. Cheney replied.
IOW, “Cite please.”
There’s some gems in this thread…
To continue the thought of my previous post (to the extent there was any thought to it), let me point out that in the months that people have been discussing the Saddam-Osama connection on these boards not one of the Bush followers (if Bush hater is a legitimate label then Bush follower is also legit) has bothered to point out that the President and the boys have not claimed a Saddam-Osama-September 11 connection or seen it as necessary or helpful to say that the connection is not related to September 11 but to some other dirty act or contemplated dirty act. Apparently the present interpretation of the rhetoric coming out of the Administration and echoed on these boards is a recent revelation.
This doesn’t jibe with my memories.
It seems that there were some who denied the 9-11 connex but held out for the UbL-SH connex.
If he thought that information had nothing to do with 9/11, it was by definition outside their purpose.
Your memories are correct; in fact there were many who claimed that SH and ObL would never even talk to each other, that ObL hated SH worse than he did America, etc. etc. There were in fact many who could and did support the war even if there was no connection at all, or even if there was antipathy between the two. I recall making the point several times that America’s first offensive in response to Pearl Harbor was to invade Vichy-controlled Morocco, and that the fact that the two were not connected was irrelevant.
There are thousands of hours of interviews out there, hundreds of speeches, dozens of press conferences. Can someone, anyone find a specific citation for a top administration official clearly saying there was a specific Iraqi connection in regards to 9/11? Not implies, not leaves the door open, not says “the Czechs think there is” … but unambiguously says that there was a connection in regards to 9/11?
I’ll offer anyone a bet: If you can find two clear, unambiguous statements directly connecting Iraq to 9/11, I’ll find twenty statements from the administration stating that there is not evidence for any such connection.
Sadly, this is another case of the left’s continuing drive off the cliff. There is a very real complaint that Bush et al allowed or even encouraged the popular misconception, by saying “9/11 was caused by AQ. Iraq had connections with AQ” and deliberately allowing people to draw the fallacious inference, even though they themselves denied it. It’s standard-issue political weaseling, but altogether unacceptable given the stakes involved. Of course that’s old news; any informed person was aware that there was some slick packaging going on here from the start … as SimonX has pointed out, this exact issue was debated to death on these boards before the war began, and some of the individuals feigning stunned outrage here are being disingenous.
The claims which can be supported by the facts are that Bush conflated, exagerrated and failed to fully disclose, and it is for that reason many of his past supporters are less than thrilled (including myself, though I did not vote for him). But instead of going with “President Bush may have had good intentions, but he knowingly allowed you to believe something that was’t true,” the left’s visceral hatred is driving them to scream “Bush Lied!” … which is also untrue, and which alienates the uncommitted voters they need.
Quite connected. One degree of Kevin Bacon. Japan to Germany, Germany declares war on US, US attacks Germany.
Well, thats quite the point, isn’t it? As you yourself have noted, the Bushiviks made every possible use of ambiguity and weasel-speak. I wouldn’t expect, under those circumstances, to find any clear and unambiguous statements, as avoidance of such is the entire point of the excercise, no?
Well, of course, sez you. It varies. I was outraged by the very first Bullshit Whopper with cheese that the Bushiviks served up. Can’t say I was stunned, but others were stunned. Quite a few others simply refused to believe it, and were only outraged that I would draw such dastardly inferences from such perfectly innocent behavior. Several of those were drubbed into stunned outrage by the sheer repitition of weaselspeak, and some still adamantly insist that there is nothing to be stunned or outraged about.
Well, it just takes so much longer to scream “Bush implied, prevaricated, exaggerated, and knowingly falsely conflated Iraq and 9/11!!” Put all of this together and the distinction between it all and “lie” is getting down to micrometer tolerances. Is it a lie? Well, I guess that depends on what the definition of “is” is.
::bows in the general direction of elucidator.::
I can’t get over that the reaction that these guys had to being caught out was to actually repeat the lie. Weirdest behavior on the part of an Admin caught in a scandalous situation I’ve ever seen.
Let’s review some past reactions:
1 - Nixon and the coverup: cornered, he finally resigned.
2 - Reagan and Iran/Contra: cornered, he allowed an investigation.
3 - Clinton and Lewinsky: cornered, he finally admitted the dirty deed.
None of these guys tried to bald-facedly repeat the same damn lie again, and be outraged at headlines pointing out their lie, once it became obvious even to a tapeworm that they had, in fact, lied.
This Admin never ceases to amaze me. They really don’t have a shred of decency, honesty, or competence in them at all.
Og, I love it when that happens.
I can’t help but notice that the two were connected. They were controlled by powers allied with one another. Hussein and UbL were not the equivalent of allied powers.
Off the top of my head I can think of when Cheney said that the Atta/Prague thing was ‘pretty well confirmed.’
What a lame ass bet. Why would anyone want you to give them twenty such statements?
When there’s a clear duty to inform, there’s a vanishingly thin line between knowingly allowing another to believe something that isn’t true where it serves one’s ends and lying.
Weasel language: the language spoken by weasels.
Furt, try reading the first part of this thread for statements by the Administration, by the President, in official communications between the various branches of government which either assert that Saddam and Osama were in cahoots in the 9/11 attacks or are predicated on such a collaboration.
Beyond that, it is pretty apparent that a major fraction that was not paying attention thought (for all I know, still thinks) that 9/11 was a joint Osama-Saddam operation. There is a significant if not overwhelming fraction of people who are paying attention who think that the Administration was claiming a 9/11 collaboration. Somebody tell me why, assuming that it was not perfectly happy to have that misconception persist, the Administration did not act to correct that misconception before it had to face the 9/11 Commissions staff finding of no such connection and resort to the preposterous claim that it never said that.
I know, I know, “Whozits’ Law.” But if you think it doesn’t fit here, wait until November and see how many people fell victim to the repeated lies of the Bush administration. Every time the Bushistas have been caught in a lie (exaggeration, innuendo, false implication, etc) their standard tactic is to repeat it. Eventually the credulous electorate comes to believe it, simply because they’ve heard the lie more often than the truth. Propaganda well learned from Hitler, Goebels and company.
“There are certain truths that are a given, even if they are not true…”
From a GOP pollster, quoted in The New York Daily News.
The president disagrees:
Excerpts from President’s Remarks in Santa Clara, California May 2, 2003
Not that he’s got any evidence to back up that claim, but he does disagree.
Well, Bush is partially right: Sadaam acted like Nelson Muntz after 9/11, as was blatant about compensating Palestinian families of suicide bombers. I knew that when he cheered al-Qaeda’s actions, he sooner or latrer was going to have his pants pulled down and be forced to walk down Baghdad’s Main Street. Bush was right in that Sadaam was blatantly cheering for al-Qaeda, even if he and them were mortal enemies.
But it turned out that cheerleading was all he did in regards to al-Qaeda.
I’m leery of these sorts of sidebars, but …
Yes, they were “connected” But Morocco had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor, Vichy France was an independant legal entity separate from Nazi Germany. Vichy France never declared war on the US and there were diplomatic relations in effect when US troops hit the beach. The analogy is by no means perfect, but the idea in both cases has always been that while we were attacked by one group/nation, the larger threat is an ideological one; to kill the threat you follow whatever route is expedient and you don’t necessarily care about the fine differences between alliances, affiliations and affinities. Such is the fundamental difference in warfare and police work.
’ Cite? I’ve only heard them say they cannot verify or disprove the Czechs.
The statements aren’t the prize, they’re the grounds for the bet. To make myself clear: “I’ll find ten times more statements saying they have no evidence.” As for stakes, how about $50?
Yes, and we’re into “meaning of is” territory there. The question is, who would have won an election between Clinton and Ken Starr?
Please name the one where they explicitly state there was a connection between Iraq and the attacks on 9/11.
Yes, and Bush’s willingness to allow this misconception is exactly what I referred to as “unacceptable weaseling.”
Again, I think many people that are acting surprised by this and the news media who are selling it as something new are being intentionlly disingenuous. As to the rest, assuming that sentance came out the way you meant it, then those people are fools.
When did I say they were not willing to have that misconception persist? That misperception was useful in selling the war. A politician’s job is to get votes, period, and the Admin was thinking in political terms when they sold this.
If I’m not saying what you’re expecting me to say, it may be you’re in Us vs. Them mode.
Painting your opponent as a weasel is a good way to win an election. Painting your opponent as a liar, when in fact he’s only a weasel, is a good way to lose one.
Furt, if you want a direct official statement from the President of a connection between September 11 and Iraq you need go no further than this. Please note the first and last sentence of the President’s message to Congress.
I don’t know any way to read that except as, to paraphrase, we are attacking Iraq because Iraq is a nation that planned, authorized, committed or aided in the September 11 attacks.
Let me suggest that you take a look at this staff report from The Christian Science Monitor, that speaks to the whole “correct the record” issue. Please note the date of the report.
Simon X in the hours since you posted that there were people on these boards who said that the Osama-Saddam connection the Administration was talking about was not related to September 11, I have been reviewing the bidding on this thing. I cannot for the life of me recall any poster here who flat footed said that the President et al were right to say there was a connection but that the President et al were not saying that Saddam was involved in September 11, either on his own or through Osama. I may be wrong (God knows I have been often enough), or I may have missed it, but I just have no recollection of that sort of a statement.
I will flat guarantee that no body from the Administration was saying that before 11:00 AM this past Wednesday.