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Empirical evidence, however it is viewed, is the foundation of a debate. I used it to contrast the form of debate which lacks empirical evidence: that of faith.
To bring these concepts into the Bushworld views of the war - it is faith to believe everything is going or will go well. It is empirically evident that many things have gone poorly (unless you are of the opinion that what we have now is and was the entire goal - an everlasting U.S. vs. Insurgent battle). When the former is used to offset the latter, the reality of the latter can no longer be used to debate the merits/status of the war.
If someone views specific empirical evidence and then states that they believe it is a sign of the impending positive outcome, that is a quality contribution to debate. Even more so based on the strength of the rationalization used to define it. When all things are viewed as a sign of impending positive outcome (both the current positives and the current negatives), such as the claim that more schools is a sign of success and more attacks from insurgents is a sign of their weakening, then the debate becomes useless as it is now simply an argument of faith.
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