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08/18/2005: And over at 3 Old Men....
Mickey gives us a well needed lesson in logic:
It’s tempting to rant and let go of the usual restraints of logical thought - to paint one’s opponent as an all bad character. In psychological circles, this is called "splitting," looking at only those qualities of another person that fit how you feel about them or what they say. The ad hominem fallacy is a version of this, discounting someone while ignoring what they are saying. Joseph Wilson and his wife are recent victims, but now we see the same strategy directed towards Cindy Sheehan. The discrediting of Cindy Sheehan has reached a fever pitch. Here is what Cindy says:But it's easier for the wingnuts to say that Cindy is deranged, or claim that the Schroeders represent only the 3 out of 10 military families that don't support Bush and the war who are being used by the anti-war left, rather than deal with the facts: Bush and his puppetmasters lied to get us into the war, they committed too few troops to control Iraq once it was conquered, as a result of their incompetence, the U.S. Army is weakened and much less able to carry out its commitments to defend this nation from other threats that might present themselves, Iraq, far from becoming a model of democracy in the middle east, has become a giant terrorist training camp and will soon be an Islamic republic allied with the mullahs in Iran....."Am I emotional? Yes, my first born was murdered. Am I angry? Yes, he was killed for lies and for a PNAC Neo-Con agenda to benefit Israel. My son joined the army to protect America, not Israel. Am I stupid? No, I know full well that my son, my family, this nation and this world were betrayed by George Bush who was influenced by the neo-con PNAC agendas after 9/11. We were told that we were attacked on 9/11 because the terrorists hate our freedoms and democracy … not for the real reason, because the Arab Muslims who attacked us hate our middle-eastern foreign policy. That hasn’t changed since America invaded and occupied Iraq … in fact it has gotten worse."Emotionally stated. Angry. Maybe making a few allegations that would be hard to prove in a court of law. But what Cindy Sheehan is saying is fundamentally correct. If you haven’t heard of the P.N.A.C. [the Project for the New American Century] or read much about them, Cindy might seem to be a bit out of line. But if you look into it just by reviewing a few internet sites [including their own], what you’ll find is that the P.N.A.C. and their related group A.E.I. were dead set on unilateral American Imperialism, and invading Iraq was way up front on the agenda before Bush was even elected. When you look at who is involved in these two groups, you’ll find most of Bush’s Cabinet, a big part of the Defense Department, the Vice President, and our new U.N. representative, John Bolton.
When Cindy says that the Bush Administration lied to get us into this war, used 911 for their own agenda, she is fundamentally correct. One has to only look at Colin Powell’s U.N. speech, Bush’s 2003 State of the Union message, almost anything Dick Cheney or Condi Rice said in the lead-up to the war, Judith Miller’s checkered reporting history, the W.H.I.G.s, the Downing street memos, the Rove/Libby leaks, the absence of the fabled Nuclear/Chemical/Biological weapons. Even if you support the Bush Administration’s policy, it’s almost impossible to avoid her conclusion that they lied in a systematic way, if you let yourself be informed. The evidence is overwhelming.
So, no matter what Cindy Sheehan is as a person, what she’s saying is essentially the truth, "The Emperor has no clothes!"
Sometimes I wonder where these guys get their drugs; I'd like to take a long vacation from reality like that every once in a while.
Len on 08.18.05 @ 08:35 AM CST
