I find it surprising that the ONE part of my rebuttal post which you take issue with is my statement that; "For the most part the inspection process had reined in his efforts on wmds and had resulted in the destruction of existing stocks of wmds."
You can say, as you did, that my statement is "simply untrue," however, if you want to argue with that statement you should argue with Kay and Blitz and a bunch of others who have reviewed the huge amount of recent evidence and concluded...drum roll....exactly that.
So the fact is that the inspection process had reined in his wmd efforts and had resulted in the destruction of his pre-existing stocks. Your statement that it took the threat of an invasion to get full and basically unfettered inspections started again has NOTHING to do with the point that if Bush had waited longer before invading, his wmd rationale for invading would have turned to dust in his hands or the point that Bush "hurried to invade" because he saw that coming. That was, as you'll recall, my point.
As far as the classic "post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy," I'd think that would be much more appropriately applied to such conservative lore as the Reagon long delayed economic boom, or the post-Clinton sudden economic collapse, or maybe the post-Iraq invasion Libyan cessation of wmd programs, or the fight on terrorism's resulting in "no recent attacks within the U.S.," or any of the many other simplistic associations we make every day to justify our stubbornly held beliefs. It doesn't work as well when the person taking a position gives a thinking, logical analysis of why that position is held and does NOT argue that the timing of the events is a controlling factor. |
