What's wrong (or right) with Bush's statement?

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.

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It's not my fault that you are misunderstanding what I meant. What I meant was that when we invaded Iraq, there was some probability that they still had hidden WMD. Let's say for the sake of having a number to talk about that it was .3.

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I will not attempt to present a reasonable number because it is irrelevant, ...

Makes perfect sense to me.

The probability was irrelevant. Let's just declare it is "defending the US" and get it over with. Or in this case drag it out for years on end.

Brandon9000 wrote:

It's not my fault that you are misunderstanding what I meant. What I meant was that when we invaded Iraq, there was some probability that they still had hidden WMD. Let's say for the sake of having a number to talk about that it was .3.

I will not attempt to present a reasonable number because it is irrelevant, ...

Makes perfect sense to me.

The probability was irrelevant. Let's just declare it is "defending the US" and get it over with. Or in this case drag it out for years on end.

Let's say you find a dictatorship that once had WMD and claims to have eliminated them, but you consider there to be a probability of .3 that it is merely hiding them. You invade and find nothing. A year later, you find a country in a similar situation, with a .3 probability that it is concealing WMD. You invade this other country, but find nothing. Now a few years later, you find a third country in the same situation and invade....etc.

I am saying that if the probability is .3, eventually you will run into one that is hiding WMD from you. In fact you will do so 30% of the time.

Oh yes, I forgot to mention:

I'm not debating you; I'm saying you're both a blow-hard and full of "it."

revel wrote:

Brandon9000 wrote:

Frank Apisa wrote:

By the way, Brandon...

...the "particular logic" you are using with regard to "probability"...namely that since we did not find WMD in Iraq we have increased the probability that we will find them when we invade some other country..."

Frank, that was not what I said. I meant something quite different.

Let's say you find a dictatorship that once had WMD and claims to have eliminated them, but you consider there to be a probability of .3 that it is merely hiding them. You invade and find nothing. A year later, you find a country in a similar situation, with a .3 probability that it is concealing WMD. You invade this other country, but find nothing. Now a few years later, you find a third country in the same situation and invade....etc.

I am saying that if the probability is .3, eventually you will run into one that is hiding WMD from you. In fact you will do so 30% of the time.

I am certainly not saying that your success or failure to find WMD in one exerts influence over what you will find in the next one. You know I do have a couple of Physics degrees, and they do make us take probability and statistics courses before we get the diploma.

This has got to be the wildest argument I have ever heard since hearing conservative arguments for the Iraq war. You think the probability of there being WMD was high because we struck out two times before (where?) because in the laws of probality (or whatever) you will eventually find what you are looking for if you search enough in enough places.

We don't have to rely on vague notions of probability. We had people inspecting Iraq right up to just before the invasion and Bush told them to go home. We should have let the inspections continue.

Nowhere, I am talking about hypothetical Bernoulli trials.

You have misquoted and misunderstood what I said. I said that if you toss a fair coin and fail to get heads the first time, you still may get heads the second time. If you don't get it the second time, nonetheless as you continue to toss the coin, the percentage of heads will approach 50%. This is all that I said, and it is, frankly, what probability means.

Hypothetically, if we invaded a series of countries, each of which had a probability of .3 of having hidden WMD, failing to find it in the first country or the second does not imply that we will not find it in the 3rd. I am not saying that the probability in Iraq was actually .3, I am simply making a statement about the nature of probability.

Brandon starts his argument with the premise that just because Saddam had WMDs in the past, he had WMDs ten years later.

He ignores some very basic facts: 1) the UN inspectors destroyed WMDs found during and after the first Gulf War, and 2) we had UN inspectors from 1992 to 2001 looking for WMDs.

If Saddam had WMDs, the only sure way to prove it was to find it in Iraq. a) we had the UN, an international organization cooperating to find WMDs, b) with 20/20 hindsight, this was the perfect solution to an intractable problem; Saddam's failure to cooperate, and c) our intelligence failed miserably, and is not justification to attack a sovereign country that posed no threat to its neighbors or to Americans.

Brandon's attempt at statistics is without logic nor any basis in fact.

cicerone imposter wrote:

Brandon starts his argument with the premise that just because Saddam had WMDs in the past, he had WMDs ten years later.

I most certainly do not. I have saturated this post with a statment that there was only some probability that he still had them. How could you miss a discussion that has now taken up pages of debate?

cicerone imposter wrote:

He ignores some very basic facts: 1) the UN inspectors destroyed WMDs found during and after the first Gulf War, and 2) we had UN inspectors from 1992 to 2001 looking for WMDs.

If Saddam had WMDs, the only sure way to prove it was to find it in Iraq. a) we had the UN, an international organization cooperating to find WMDs, b) with 20/20 hindsight, this was the perfect solution to an intractable problem; Saddam's failure to cooperate, and c) our intelligence failed miserably, and is not justification to attack a sovereign country that posed no threat to its neighbors or to Americans.

A country that is ruled by a terrible, murderous dictator, has had programs to develop nuclear, biological, and chemical WMD, and, after agreeing to eliminate such weapons has spent years hiding them and lying about it is certainly a danger.

I guess you're parados's relief. Nice technique.

I'm out people. Debating with four or five of you at once is not very hard, but eventually becomes fatiguing. I was perfectly right in everything I said to Frank, as the more intelligent among you by this time realize. Now you can claim victory, since I have better things to do than argue with the likes of you all day.

Perhaps, seeing that you can't make headway, this is the segue to your exit from the discussion.

I'm out people. Debating with four or five of you at once is not very hard, but eventually becomes fatiguing. I was perfectly right in everything I said to Frank, as the more intelligent among you by this time realize. Now you can claim victory, since I have better things to do than argue with the likes of you all day.

DrewDad wrote:

Oh yes, I forgot to mention:

I'm not debating you; I'm saying you're both a blow-hard and full of "it."

It's sad that you are forced to debate on this level, rather than addressing the points under discussion. An ad hominem not at least accompanied by an actual argument is nothing to be proud of.

It's about time to get a few of your friends to relieve you here, so that when I finally have had enough and drop out of the discussion, you can claim victory.