Quotes, "... merely your speculation, ican. Your speculation is not evidence that Saddam harbored al Qaeda, or even tolerated them.[Without evidence to support this statement of yours, this statement of yours is merely your speculation, InfraBlue.]" Is it correct to assume that it's almost impossible to prove a negative?
cicerone imposter wrote:ad hominem anyone?
Oh, I'm sorry C.I.... did I leave you out? Here:
Just scoot up next to them other guys. :wink:
(
BBWH
)
cicerone imposter wrote:Quotes, "... merely your speculation, ican. Your speculation is not evidence that Saddam harbored al Qaeda, or even tolerated them.[Without evidence to support this statement of yours, this statement of yours is merely your speculation, InfraBlue.]" Is it correct to assume that it's almost impossible to prove a negative?
First of all, the issue between InfraBlue and me is not a matter of
proof. It is a matter of
evidence. Is what I offered mere
speculation or is it
evidence? That is the question!
By the way, I bet no one can prove anything is true to a certainty without assuming at least one thing one cannot prove is true to a certainty. Prove me wrong!
Scientists and Engineers regularly provide persuasive evidence of the truth of negatives and so do other people.
There exists compelling evidence that Frank is
not a female, that male humans do
not give birth to children, that the earth is
not flat, that the speed of light in a vacuum is
not variable, that pigs do
not fly, that the earth does
not begin to cool after the completion of an ice age, that our sun has
not radiated heat at a constant intensity, ....
I'm pretty sure both Ican and O'Bill are never wrong, they are both very consistent in telling everyone they are always right. (I believe them)
Okay, guys, let's hang it up for a few hours to enjoy the New Year.
http://web.icq.com/friendship/swf/0,,16961_rs,00.swf
ican711nm wrote:dyslexia wrote:I'm pretty sure both Ican and O'Bill are never wrong, they are both very consistent in telling everyone they are always right. (I believe them)
PROVE IT IF YOU CAN!
A hint: you can provide compelling evidence of the truth of a negative by providing compelling evidence its inverse is false. So, all you have to do to provide compelling evidence we are not "never wrong" is provide compelling evidence that the proposition that we are always right is false. Let me help you. The sun is square.
Maybe the following article will help you figure out how to properly debate and what the requirements are for those who start any particular subject and what the requirements are for those responding to a subject.
http://www.sherrin.com/DebateHandout.pdf
The following is another article you might helpful in ridding yourself of this rut you got yourself into in regards to the whole Saddam and AQ link-so called.
http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20030404.html
Quote:Evidence found at the Ansar Al-Islam camp ties Al Qaeda to Saddam Hussein.
On March 31, coalition forces raided the camp of Ansar Al-Islam, an extremist Islamic group based in Iraqi Kurdistan that is allegedly affiliated with Al Qaeda. After the raid, coalition leaders claimed to have found evidence demonstrating a link between the two groups. However, the Associated Press story about the raid specifically states that "there was no indication any of the evidence tied Ansar to Saddam Hussein as Washington has maintained."
Nonetheless, Rush Limbaugh simply asserted that the evidence found demonstrates an Al Qaeda-Iraq link, arguing that the very existence of the group in the Kurdish part of northern Iraq proves that Saddam is linked to Al Qaeda. The fact is, however, that Kurdish northern provinces of Iraq have been outside of Saddam's control since 1991 and that his possible knowledge of activities there is not in itself proof of anything. Rather than even making an argument to this effect, the Union Leader in New Hampshire brazenly headlined the AP story "HAVEN FOR TERROR: U.S.-led raid reveals Saddam's al-Qaida ties," ignoring the contradictory conclusion in the text below.
http://www.command-post.org/2_archives/004411.html
I'll be babysitting the rest of the night, but I hope you all take a breather and have a nice night. Just remember don't
and drive.
happy new years though.
btw-bill, i like those little praying smilies thingies.
revel wrote:I'll be babysitting the rest of the night, but I hope you all take a breather and have a nice night. Just remember don't
and drive.
happy new years though.
btw-bill, i like those little praying smilies thingies.
Happy New year to you, too, Revel!
And everyone!
My present to you, Revel...
If you want:
cut and paste this:
Code:[img]http://smileys.smileycentral.com/cat/4/4_17_208.gif[/img]
If you want:
cut and paste
Code:[img]http://smileys.smileycentral.com/cat/29/29_3_3.gif[/img]
Humpf .... did'nt get me no present....
[my responses are in blue]
[quote="revel]
Maybe the following article will help you figure out how to properly debate and what the requirements are for those who start any particular subject and what the requirements are for those responding to a subject.[/quote]
I infer that it is your proposition that I do not debate properly.
It is my counter proposition that I do debate properly.
Please provide me your specific reasons for thinking your proposition is true and/or mine is false.
I read all of the links you posted and I am unable on my own to determine from those links why I should think my proposition is false. You have not yet told me why you think your proposition is true and/or why mine is false.
My proposition to InfraBlue was and is:
Saddam Hussein harbored al Qaeda in northern Iraq.
InfraBlue's counter proposition was and is:
There is zero evidence that Sadda Hussein harbored al Qaeda in northern Iraq.
I provided what I perceive to be some evidence that Saddam Hussein harbored al Qaeda in northern Iraq.
InfraBlue responded by stating my evidence was not evidence; it was only speculations.
InfraBlue has not yet told me why he thinks what he responded is true.
Gelisgesti wrote:Humpf .... did'nt get me no present....
My bad. What a terrible oversight. Here you are:
Code:[IMG]http://smileys.smileycentral.com/cat/10/10_1_9.gif[/IMG]
I wish I could be there when you opened it! :wink:
Happy New Year Gel!
And everyone!
New definiton of "torture."
Justice Dept. Toughens Rule on Torture
By NEIL A. LEWIS
Published: January 1, 2005
WASHINGTON, Dec. 31 - The Justice Department has broadened its definition of torture, significantly retreating from a memorandum in August 2002 that defined torture extremely narrowly and said President Bush could ignore domestic and international prohibitions against torture in the name of national security.
The new definition was in a memorandum posted on the department's Web site late Thursday night with no public announcement. It comes one week before the Senate Judiciary Committee is set to question Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel and nominee for attorney general, about his role in formulating legal policies that critics have said led to abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
The new memorandum, first reported in The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, largely dismisses the August 2002 definition, especially the part that asserted that mistreatment rose to the level of torture only if it produced severe pain equivalent to that associated with organ failure or death.
"Torture is abhorrent both to American law and values and to international norms," said the new memorandum written by Daniel Levin, the acting assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel, which had produced the earlier definition.
Mr. Gonzales, who will go before the Senate committee for confirmation hearings, served as a supervisor and coordinator inside the administration as lawyers drafted new approaches on the limits of coercive techniques in interrogations and the scope of the president's authority in fighting a war against terrorists.
A memorandum in January 2002 to President Bush that Mr. Gonzales signed sided with the Justice Department in asserting that the Geneva Conventions did not bind the United States in its treatment of detainees captured in the fighting in Afghanistan.
The August 2002 Justice Department memorandum and a later memorandum from an administration legal task force with similar conclusions were widely denounced in Congress and by human rights groups as cornerstones in the approach to detainees that led to abuses at Abu Ghraib and at the detention center in Guantánamo.
The political effect of the new memorandum on Mr. Gonzales's appearance before the committee was unclear. He has been expected to assert, as he has before, that neither he nor Mr. Bush condones torture.
But the change could underline what had been the undisputed policy of the administration at least until June, when officials said it was no longer applicable and would be rewritten. That position came just after the August 2002 memorandum was disclosed in published reports.
Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has sued the administration over its interrogation policies, said Friday that the redefinition "makes it clear that the earlier one was not just some intellectual theorizing by some lawyers about what was possible."
"It means it must have been implemented in some way," Mr. Ratner said. "It puts the burden on the administration to say what practices were actually put in place under those auspices."
The International Committee of the Red Cross has said in private messages to the United States government that American personnel have engaged in torture of detainees, both in Iraq and at Guantánamo.
The 2002 memorandum was signed by Jay S. Bybee, who was then the head of the legal counsel office in the Justice Department. Now a federal appeals court judge in Nevada, Mr. Bybee has declined to comment on the issue.
The bulk of the memorandum is devoted to the Convention Against Torture and legislation enacted by Congress that gives it the force of law. "We conclude that torture as defined in and proscribed by" the statute and treaty, covers only extreme acts and severe pain," it says.
It also says: "When the pain is physical, it must be of an intensity akin to that which accompanies serious physical injury such as death or organ failure. Severe mental pain requires suffering not just at the moment of infliction but it also requires lasting psychological harm."
In revising that view, the current memorandum parses the language and the treaty differently, saying, for example, that torture could include "severe physical suffering" as well as "severe physical pain." The Bybee memorandum tried to limit torture to severe physical pain. But the new memorandum also noted that physical suffering was difficult to define.
One distinction is that the new memorandum rejects the earlier assertion that torture may be said to occur only if the interrogator meant to cause the harm that resulted.
David Scheffer, a senior State Department human rights official in the Clinton administration who teaches law at George Washington University, said Friday that while the Justice Department's change was commendable, it might still provide too flexible a definition of torture, leaving too many judgments in the hands of interrogators.
The new memorandum dealt with the issue of the earlier opinion's granting the president the power to authorize torture by saying that the Justice Department did not have to consider that matter any longer as "such authority would be inconsistent with the president's unequivocal directive that United States personnel not engage in torture."
Mr. Bush's spokesman in Crawford, Tex., Trent Duffy, said on Friday that while the Justice Department took the lead on the issue, it sought comment from the president's Office of Legal Counsel. The thrust of the comments were "to reiterate the president's determination that the United States never engage in torture," Mr. Duffy said.
Interesting food for thought, Walter.
Humans killed by nature = news
Humans killed by bombs = not news if they were our bombs.
Showing dead people if we killed them: in very bad taste- avoid.
Otherwise, very good for viewing figures.
Interesting example of double standards.
It's not all that surprising to this observer. This country has lost it's moral footing/compass many years ago, and with president Bush at the helm, we've gone further down the tunnel of darkness. This is the first US administration that has restricted our seeing our dead soldiers draped in their coffins, and the maimed soldiers in and out of hospitals. On top of all that, we don't see the numbers of innocent Iraqis killed (now estimated to be over 50,000) by our bombs and bullets. Such sensitivity! Hogwash! They are playing with people's perception of what war is all about, and sanitized for the American public. We get what we wish for, and it doesn't look pretty for our children and grandchildren.
ican711nm wrote:[my responses are in blue]
[quote="revel]
Maybe the following article will help you figure out how to properly debate and what the requirements are for those who start any particular subject and what the requirements are for those responding to a subject.
I infer that it is your proposition that I do not debate properly.
It is my counter proposition that I do debate properly.
Please provide me your specific reasons for thinking your proposition is true and/or mine is false.
I read all of the links you posted and I am unable on my own to determine from those links why I should think my proposition is false. You have not yet told me why you think your proposition is true and/or why mine is false.
My proposition to InfraBlue was and is:
Saddam Hussein harbored al Qaeda in northern Iraq.
InfraBlue's counter proposition was and is:
There is zero evidence that Sadda Hussein harbored al Qaeda in northern Iraq.
I provided what I perceive to be some evidence that Saddam Hussein harbored al Qaeda in northern Iraq.
InfraBlue responded by stating my evidence was not evidence; it was only speculations.
InfraBlue has not yet told me why he thinks what he responded is true.[/quote]
You are the one bringing a claim and so it is up to you to prove that it is reasonably true like someone would if they were bringing a case up in a court of law. If there is reason to doubt your claim then that is all the counter person in the debate has to prove.
You are saying that because saddam did not do anything to get rid of that terrorist then that is proof or evidence that saddam harbored terrorist.. You say that even though it is a fact that the terrorist was in a part of the country that saddam
had no control of and so he could not take care of that one terrorist that was in the northern part of Iraq. Right there is your proof or evidence that there is reason to doubt your claim that saddam harbored terrorist based on the evidence you have stated so far.
