Does anyone else know of a precedent in debating that requires opposing members to make each other's case for them?


The irony, of course, is that the discussion quickly degenerated into an argument over whethr host is credible or not...which occurs often when he posts. Very rarely do people engage with the issue at hand.
Specifically, is the premise that host is not credible and therefore, we ought not to believe that people knew that this disaster could occur?
Or that we should not believe that the president stated, contrary to the public record, no one thought this could happen?

Let's just agree that host is a big fat liar for the sake of the thread ;)
Does anyone dispute that:

a) publicly and easily available evidence exists that officials knew this disaster was a question of when, not if
b) the president claimed in his speech that no one conceived this disaster would occur

if you can not dispute those two premises, should we conclude the president lied?
If not, why not?

Since when do Christians actually follow the Book?

And they stay with him because, like religion, politics doesn't require thought to feel a part of it... it just requires a notion of popularity and solidarity.

In re: smooth's post re:whether I think Bush actually lied regarding our possible preparedness for disasters... I do not dispute that there is ample evidence on both sides that can be easily interpreted both ways. I believe that the interpretation mostly is a result of the biases of whoever is reading. As it happens, I do not like Bush for a variety of reasons, none of which are directly related to his being Republican, but rather his actual governing practices, but I digress.

In regards to 9/11, yes, I believe there was a lot of bullshit and/or lies put out there by the governing parties. I'm betting they did hear about the possibilities far ahead of the incident, but didn't put any stock into them since I'm sure they hear about a LOT of possible threats constantly. My beef has always been about how they handled it after the fact. Rather than saying "we didn't know, we had no idea" and then "okay, well, maybe we might have heard something, but it's x's fault!!!" etc. etc.... wouldn't it be better to be a little more honest? Give the American people the benefit of assuming they're at least partially intelligent? Why not say "Look, with 90% (or whatever is accurate) of possible threats reported, they never actually come to fruition. So we didn't think it'd actually happen. We're working on our systems now to avoid this for future issues." While it's not great, it's certainly a lot more honest, and a lot harder to be critical. Okay, they fucked up. Agreed. Now we need to fix our country and it's systems and playing the blame game is useless. But instead they did play the blame game, and that's what I find to be the lies and dishonest actions of the President and his administration. I believe they decided to not be honest with the people about their intents and reasons and motives.

As for NO... well, actually, I don't see how this is actually the Federal gov't's fault so much. It's a natural disaster, and they've had a zillion (yes, that's the exact figure) hurricanes there before without this kind of devastation. Weathermen are usually crying "wolf" and then when shit actually happens, they get smug that we didn't listen. But the last 93 times they cried wolf, nothing happened. So I don't actually think Bush was so wrong here. I do think the slow response time was the issue, not the preparedness. Everywhere, in every town and city, maintenance of facilities is an on-going process. Sometimes things are new, and in between those times, things need repairs. It's a fact of life. So no, I don't think they really knew how bad it was going to be.

Summary:
Lying after 9/11? Yes. But not in the way that Host presented, in my terribly humble opinion.
Lying after NOLA? No. Just poor response.

I think that everything bush does is some form of political imagemaking. That being the case, the president can only be honest when it is politically expedient for him to do so. Part of the image the president has attempted to convey throughout his presidency has been that he is infallible in his vast decisionmaking abilities. To his knowledge he has never made a mistake in conducting his leadership of this country. It leaves me to wonder what kind of narcissistic delusions he suffers. Does he just convince himself that he couldn't have known that hurricanes can hit new orleans and then ignore all evidence to the contrary? How does his conservative base, one that seems to trip all over itself expressing its love for personal accountability keep letting him slide?

IMHO, because almost all polititians are dishonest and people tend to support the dishonest polititian who best expresses their views.

<I>Please</I> for the sake of my sanity tell me that this entire thread isn't about Bush saying "no one" instead of "not many." If this is the case, this is the worst political discussion of all time. It's like someone arguing about a fastfood teller saying $5.50 instead of $5.51. Are we all supposed to take in that Bush is a blatant liar to the American people because he made an assumption that citizens would be smart enough to know that he meant "not many" by "no one?"

As someone else mentioned, NOLA hasn't been hit by a Cat 5 storm in 100 years, even after Cat 5 warnings. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that <B>most</B> people didn't think this storm would be this devastating, especially considering the past evidence.

-Lasereth

Well you gotta remember that for a claim to be a "lie" three requirements have to be met:

1. it has to be false
2. the liar has to know that the claim is false
3. the liar has to intend for his listener to believe him

While 1 and 3 are pretty easy to establish in Bush's case, his aura of bumbling ignorance always seems to make 2 a difficult one to satisfy . . . .

Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure I would call Bush a liar, but I would definitely call him an idiot, and I doubt it's really much better to have an idiot than a liar in the Oval Office.

Anyway, even if he doesn't tell Clinton-style straight-faced lies, he and his administration are certainly contributing to the spread of disinformation among his fellow idiots in the general public. The fictions that Saddam was a threat and Iraq was involved in 9/11, maybe Bush never technically lied about them, but with his help the idiots have got a hold of them and use them to delude themselves about the current state of affairs. But Bush ran into a major problem: people are dying, and if there's one thing the idiots can actually understand it's that, so finally he's no longer getting a free ride. It's just too bad it had to happen after he was already re-elected.

From a column by William Safire:

I guess Hillary is a deluded idiot.

Not unreasonable at all....to reasonable people.
I wouldn't even blame this on Kerry, if he were President.