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well I hate to break this to you, aceventura, but the examples you cited were either truisms or tautologies.
they make sense because they are true because the statement makes them true by the logic within the sentence.
clarity is supposed to be how closely one's communication approximates the reasoning, or vision, underlying his or her expressions.
that means when you say something, how well does it communicate what you're thinking about and why you're thinking the thing you are talking about
when a president is making a case for war, given that's the quotes you're using for example here, then most people in a democratic country expect their leaders to explain why they are supposed to be going to war and [/ihow[/i] they are going to go to war...and more importantly for some, what happens after the war.
it's not enough to simply leave things as important as war to truisms or tautologies because they don't allow for any kind of feedback loops...unless you don't think that the population should have much say in war propositions. and some people believe that, but I don't.
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"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann
"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman
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