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Old 08-10-2003, 11:24 PM   #9 (permalink)
Dragonlich
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Location: The Netherlands
Quote:
Originally posted by ctembreull
I've said this before, but this is an appropriate topic for a restatement.

Formal logic states that nobody can prove a negative; an argument which claims a theorem to be true simply because nobody can prove it wrong is a fallacy. It has been stated that Saddam possesses weapons of mass destruction because he has not proven that he does not. This is a logical fallacy, and a piss-poor justification for war to boot. The hawks out there can scream until they're blue in the face about how Saddam has to prove it; this doesn't change the cold, hard fact that the entire basis for the war rested upon a logical fallacy that a first-year college student should know to avoid.
This question wouldn't be "proving a negative". It would be proving a negative if we didn't know whether Saddam had any WMDs at all. But we *do* know that Saddam had them; we had a long list detailing everything he used to have.

Now, let's throw all those weapons on a big heap, and call the total amount X. We know that Saddam destroyed a certain amount of those weapons, because he proved this. Throw this on a big heap, and call the total amount Y. Now, unfortunately, X is not equal to Y. That is, there is a certain amount of WMD material which has not been proven to be destroyed. Therefore, it is *possible* it is still out there. It used to be, and I doubt it simply disappeared into thin air. The problem is that nobody seems to be able to show where it is.

Saddam could easily have proven the destruction of his WMDs, simply by accounting for everything he had bought and/or produced in the past. Hell, even this wasn't needed - he simply had to prove the destruction of everything he was shown to have after the '91 gulf war. Shortly before the US attack, Hans Blix himself said there were still questions about the whereabouts of large amounts of chemical and biological weapons...

My take on this: If Saddam had gotten rid of his WMDs in an orderly manner, he could have complied. He should have known that he would have to proof everything he said, so he should have had at least *some* evidence of everything he did with his WMDs. He did not, which was a big mistake, because it allowed the US to use the resulting uncertainty to push for war.

Now, suppose the whole question *is* a logical fallacy (which it isn't)... The UN demanded that Iraq prove the destruction of his WMDs. That means that he *had* to comply. In fact, because the UN is supposedly the body dictating international law, their demands on Iraq were in effect extensions of that law; Saddam broke that law by not complying fully, and any inability to do so is pretty much irrelevant. If your government decides to make a law against breathing, and you do not comply, you get fined. As silly as the law may be, you *still* have to follow it.

Whether or not the WMDs are a poor justification of this war is a different question altogether. If the only reason for the war would be those WMDs, I wouldn't have supported it, if only because (at least) most of the WMDs were gone, and any future use would have resulted in some serious payback... To me, the WMD issue is just another in a long list of reasons for going in.
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