Now THAT is funny. You, advocating moderation. I hardly think that calling me a “terrorist” is a moderate opinion.
[
](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=354925&page=1&highlight=mswas)
You long ago abdicated any right you had to say anything about moderation. You are one of the most rabid, partisan, belligerent people I have ever seen on these boards.
Reserve judgment, indeed. :rolleyes:
I denying your dog!!
On the other hand, were I to hide something that I don’t want someone to find, I’d hide them in plain sight. It is for the very reason that you stated that it would be effective.
That’s not to say that the story isn’t baloney, but that part of it is not implausible to me at all.
(bolding mine)
You’ve misplaced the period. It should go right after “reality”.
Yes, but reserving judgement isn’t the same thing as being credulous: you talk about “forming an opinion” as if this is a matter for subjective interpretation, but it’s merely weighing probabilities in order to determine a more likely factual explanation. Were all the previous inspectors wrong, or is this guy full of shit?
As far as forming a “solid” opinion: well, any conclusion reached from an assessment of the evidence should be open to amendment should more compelling evidence arise. All conclusions should be open to re-evaluation: that’s a basis of critical thinking.
Agreed. I don’t dispute the validity of the witness account, only its usefulness as evidence.
mswas you seem to be beating the wrong horse here. Clothahump started this thread with the latest “revelation” and a smug attitude. It was quickly hammered upon as not being credible. It may very well be true, many folks said that,but it can only be judged on what it is: the unsupported second-hand accounting of somone trying to sell a book. It contravenes the more substantial evidence that there are none and wereno WMDs. However, as you point out, there has been no definitive proof of their non-existence, mostly because it is almost impossible to prove that deinitively.
So, yes the possibility exists, that WMDs were smuggled into Syria. This guys “confession” is hardly proof of that.
One of my cites was Dr. Kay talking about the weapons being moved to Syria.
No, I’ve always thought the point was that I was really irritated by pseudo-intellectual hypocrites who talk a big game about critical thinking skills but are more than willing to jump to conclusions on many issues only to have their unsubstantiated bias supported by a group of other pseudo-intellectuals willing to propose a shared opinion as fact thus allowing them not to question their own ignorance because their peer group which they have deemed as ‘smart’ agrees with them.
Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction do not even rate on my scale of ‘deeply held beliefs’, and after observing politics in both my immediate social circles and the world at large there tends to be certain trends toward groupthink where the body politic (in whatever form it may take) wants to believe something so that opinion becomes the belief of the status quo regardless of whether or not that belief actually resembles fact. If the hypothesis proves difficult to prove then the body politic will happily believe that it is untrue because it is the opinion of the peer group, and the peer group holds sway over what people believe, oftentimes at the expense of the truth. What is particularly dangerous about a group of individuals such as the ones that inhabit this board is that they think that by maintaining a fanatical zeal toward mouthing platitudes at the pursuit of science, that they are automatically aligned with science, and therefore they can quote every critical thinking rule in the book, but oftentimes avoid applying it because it’s more expedient to go with the status quo.
Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of absence. No it is NOT more logical to make an assumption that something is false because there is a lack of evidence to the contrary. It is reasonable to move forward pragmatically on a judgement call due to a lack of evidence, but that is not the same as scoffing at someone who is not satisfied enough by the lack of evidence, and decides that they would like to continue exploring what is still an open question even if the herd has decided that the lack of evidence is sufficient for them to proceed past that particular sticking point.
If you want to make a practical decision and choose to believe something is true because it seems true, that’s perfectly rational, but anyone who isn’t satisfied by the pragmatic decision to move forward is NOT lacking in critical thinking skills, and anyone who claims that they are not is not doing science any favors no matter how much they believe that they are aligned with science or not.
Erek
John McCain moving forward with a political decision based upon the best knowledge available is a far cry from you being a dickhead about it on a message board. He HAS to make decisions that affect people’s lives. You have the luxury of being able to sit here and speculate on the internet. It’s hardly the same fucking thing at all.
You lost me at “No”.
Woah. Your one cite from a reputible source is over two years old! David Kay has since come out admonsishing Bush to admit there were no WMDs.
For a more recent review of the Weapons Inspectors’ take on the Iraqi-Syrian WMD issue see:
I hope that was addressed to mswas. It was his cite and my reply.
I was simply conceding a point.
It’s never too late to learn to read, Chumley. Did you notice I posted more than that sentence?
“If somebody moved the weapons to Syria, as Clothahump is unsurprisingly willing to believe, they also packed up every shred of evidence and moved that, too,” I said.
Why did the post-war inspectors (Kay’s team) find not only no weapons, but no evidence of any kind of infrastructure that you would have needed if you were making chemical weapons and moving them around and then out of the country? Where did that stuff go?
This is almost through the looking glass shit here. You’re now arguing that the fact that there is NO evidence to support the existence of these weapons actually means we can’t know they didn’t exist. You’re completely wrong, but your enthusiasm is fun. You’re not asking anybody to reserve judgment anymore. You’re asking them to reverse judgment. And why? One Iraqi guy, years after everybody realizes there were no weapons, says there were weapons to sell a book. Yawn.
I didn’t call you a terrorist, I said you weren’t better than a terrorist. I said you are morally equivalent, in that you are a soldier fighting in a war just as your enemy is a soldier fighting in a war. The label terrorist is a propagandistic perjorative created by the state as a label for any combatant opposing the state’s agenda.
Which side would I be partisan for I wonder? I usually get in the most trouble here on these boards because I refuse to pick a side. Hell the thread you just referenced was one where I refused to pick a side and say one side was better than the other. I make fun of Democrats and Republicans equally. I don’t choose any one religion as the gospel truth over any other. I don’t think that any country is morally superior to any other. So which side exactly would it be that I am partisan for?
By Bush’s criteria, I am either with him or I am with the terrorists. Well I don’t support him because I think he’s the biggest threat to America, well, ever. I’d vote for John McCain if he ran for President, and I intend to help with the Elliott Spitzer campaign when he runs for Governor if I can. I am against aristocratic corporate corruption, but I’m a capitalist and I own two corporations myself so I’m not anti-capitalist. I deal with communistic collective systems all the time, and I like that sort of lifestyle, but I see no conflict between them and capitalism and don’t want to force my lifestyle on anyone.
You got me, I’m an American, I believe in Freedom, I believe that all men are created equal, I believe that running the world with corporate greed leads to tyranny. I believe that every man is responsible for his actions and that “Just following orders” isn’t an excuse for ANY action. I believe that military aggressor forces in foreign countries that are funded by usurious taxation coming out of my pocket in favor of the rich fat cats who aren’t paying taxes in line with their incomes, and STILL they steal from people’s pensions, should be taken down.
You are free to believe that you are morally superior to a terrorist and I am free to believe that you are deluded.
Erek
Umm no matter how much you would like for this to be the case I am not asking people to reverse judgement.
I don’t know what the truth of the matter is, and I am perfectly willing to accept that I don’t know what the truth of the matter is. The issue is that people just jump to a conclusion that’s the most palatable and they believe it. The fact of the matter is that what I said isn’t a tin foil hat conspiracy. Daddy Bush was selling WMDs to Iraq, the son Bush thought that maybe some of those were still around, or maybe he didn’t and he just wanted a pretext to invade Iraq for the Neocon agenda.
I am getting kind of sick of people pulling out the tin foil hat conspiracy argument in this case because we’ve caught the Bush administration in plenty of lies and conspiracies.
I don’t know how VX gas is made, but I know that a chemistry setup doesn’t require some kind of major industrial capacity, it requires a warehouse with some beekers setup. I remain skeptical that in a country that big that they cannot get under control that they searched every possible place that these things could be. Do I think that the amount was probably negligible? Yes, I do believe that. I think that even if they existed that they were a poor pretext for going to war. However, that’s different from outright dismissing them. And neither I nor Clothahump are idiots for believing it is still possible that there are WMDs floating around out there in the hands of Middle Eastern regimes that were once in Saddam Hussein’s hands.
Anyway, I don’t give a fuck whether the WMDs exist or not, I am just tired of the hypocritical superiority on this board. I’d like to see people give these issues a bit more thought because we’re dealing with international politics, which has been the realm of lies and obfuscations for our entire history.
Erek
This is exactly what I said as the most likely thing when we first got in and found nothing. It was backed by Isreali intelligence and by Saddam’s own ravings. What I said that SH likely had the beginnings of new WMD in his labs and so forth, but that the evidence and the material was moved to Sria. Note that US intelligence also confirmed movement of much stuff to Sryia post Bush ultimatum and pre-invasion. Of course- that could well have been loot and the porn collection (and “loot” is very likely).
This really just proves that Saddam was trying to get back into the WMD game. However- there still couldn’t have been a lot of it. Not enough to be a creditable threat to the USA.
There was some 10% of the OLD stuff “missing” after Gulf war 1 (according to the UN, anyways). Blix went in expecting to find some of this. However, all that was apparently lost, used up, destroyed or just bad paperwork.
In any case, Blix did say that the credible THREAT of military force was nessesary for Saddam to let Blix & co back in. What the problem is- we didn’t let Blix do his job. Blix didn’t find anything as:
But still- HE DIDN’T FIND ANYTHING!
Geezus christ you are an idiot. John McCain was a member of the commission that unanimously reported that the idea that there were WMD to move to Syria was bullshit.
Whatever insults you might throw at me, it’s pretty damn clear that you are not just a whackjob, but a poorly informed one. And, for your information, I don’t think anyone can really say that I have the “luxury” of being an idle commentator/speculator on foreign policy matters. It just so happens that I workin in foreign policy, so I get paid fairly well to do what I do here for free. That makes my “speculation” my livelihood, not my “luxury.” 
Really? So who are you and administrative assistant for?
I think what mswas is getting at is that this is another example of confirmation bias. We are ALL more likely to believe that which validates our preconceived notions, and disbelieve that which conflicts with them. Human nature.
For example, if this were a book by a former Saddam general, claiming that there never were WMD and the Americans knew it and manufactured the intelligence, we’d have half the people in this thread screaming that it’s a crock, and the other half claiming that it’s more proof that Bush lied/people died. It’s just that the half that would be ready to beleive the book are the ones laughing at the ‘wmd moved to Syria’ claim.
There have been plenty of kooky left-wing conspiracies that have been swallowed hook, line, and sinker by the very people on this board who are demanding hard evidence before believing anything that might prop up Bush’s claims. Confirmation bias in action.
As for WMDs, I don’t know if any went to Syria, but I am surprised that there seems to be no answer to WHY all the various intelligence agencies believed Saddam had WMD when he apparently didn’t. Some of the evidence Colin Powell presented STILL looks compelling. Remember the audio tapes of Iraq soldiers talking about sanitizing a location before the inspectors arrived? Or the before/after satellite shots of a suspected WMD facility which appeared to have been completely cleared after inspectors announced they wished to visit it? If Saddam really had no WMD, what the hell?
Also, remember that at the start of the war, as the U.S. military was accepting surrenders from Iraqi units, the Iraqi generals themselves were telling the Americans that they thought they had WMD. It was never their own unit, but they ‘had heard’ that the next unit over the hill had them. Then that unit would say the same thing. Almost like an urban legend. If Saddam’s own generals believed their own army had WMD, then again, what the hell?
Saddam’s behaviour before the war was entirely consistent with someone hiding WMD. The behaviour spotted on the ground by satellite and intercepted by radio was consistent with it. Many intelligence agencies, including the Germans, the Russians, the French, and the Brits believed that he had them.
It’s a big mystery. Even a fascinating one. And these questions have never been answered satisfactorily. The answer doesn’t have to be that they were moved to Syria. It could be lots of things. Perhaps Saddam was letting everyone believe he had them, including his own military, because he thought the threat of them would keep everyone in line. Maybe he was simply nuts, and figured imaginary WMD were just as good as real ones in the deterrent department. Or maybe HE thought he had them, and was being mislead by his own generals. Or perhaps they are in Syria, or there is another explanation.
The problem is that no one really wants to find out. The left is happy to just fall back on “Bush lied”. They don’t want to find out that there were good reasons for believing they were there. The right doesn’t necessarily want to know, because they don’t want to find out if the answer was, “They were never there and a blind monkey should have known it”. The intelligence services would probably like this monumental screw-up to just go away. So this huge, fascinating question goes unanswered.
Thanks Sam, Confirmation Bias is a great term, I am going to have to remember that one. That’s exactly what I was getting at.