Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Point by point debunking of Powell's February go-to-war speech

ctembreull · 08-10-2003, 11:34 PM

Dragonlich:

Did you even read the article? The whole point of the thing was to state that we didn't "know" the things we said we knew. We made numerous claims regarding fairly specific quantities and types. Which leads me back to the point that we didn't actually know much of anything regarding putative WMDs in Iraq, but we claimed he had them anyway and told him to prove otherwise. Bam, instant logical fallacy. What amazes me is that it's taken so long for the national media to twig to something that millions and millions of Americans have been saying since February, if not earlier.

One more quick question: If it's been destroyed, how do you prove you destroyed it? Suppose, if he's as shoddy a leader as you and others have been claimed, that he didn't bother to write down that he did it, he just did it. How, then, does he go about proving it? And then, if the weapons were destroyed, with or without documentation, what was our justification? We had to invade to be sure? You don't kill 10,000 civilians over an uncertainty.

The grown-up thing (you remember, the grown-ups are *supposed* to be in charge now) to do would be to simply admit that the WMD argument and the attendant claims of al-Quaeda connections were equal parts ideology and bluster, calculated specifically to drum up popular suport for a war. Because that's really all it was. I'm saying nothing about other motives, but it's pretty much been established that Iraq's WMDs, along with its al-Quaeda connections, were nothing more than smoke and mirrors.

08-10-2003, 11:34 PM	#10 (permalink)
ctembreull Crazy Location: Silicon Valley, CA, USA, Earth	Dragonlich: Did you even read the article? The whole point of the thing was to state that we didn't "know" the things we said we knew. We made numerous claims regarding fairly specific quantities and types. Which leads me back to the point that we didn't actually know much of anything regarding putative WMDs in Iraq, but we claimed he had them anyway and told him to prove otherwise. Bam, instant logical fallacy. What amazes me is that it's taken so long for the national media to twig to something that millions and millions of Americans have been saying since February, if not earlier. One more quick question: If it's been destroyed, how do you prove you destroyed it? Suppose, if he's as shoddy a leader as you and others have been claimed, that he didn't bother to write down that he did it, he just did it. How, then, does he go about proving it? And then, if the weapons were destroyed, with or without documentation, what was our justification? We had to invade to be sure? You don't kill 10,000 civilians over an uncertainty. The grown-up thing (you remember, the grown-ups are supposed to be in charge now) to do would be to simply admit that the WMD argument and the attendant claims of al-Quaeda connections were equal parts ideology and bluster, calculated specifically to drum up popular suport for a war. Because that's really all it was. I'm saying nothing about other motives, but it's pretty much been established that Iraq's WMDs, along with its al-Quaeda connections, were nothing more than smoke and mirrors. __________________ Mac "If it's nae Scottish, it's crap!