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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (132430)	5/10/2004 11:34:57 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

20/20

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (132430)	5/10/2004 12:46:46 PM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hawk, you keep hitting that "you couldn't have known the Saddam threat was overstated without blindly guessing" chord. The fact is, however, that we make many everyday decisions to DISBELIEVE people who have superior knowledge, based on what THEY TELL US. Everyday we're bombarded with hair growth tonics, weight loss aids, penis enlargement e-mails (or is that only me), and political ads. Some of them we choose to believe but many we discount. The ones we discount most quickly are those that overstate things in ways that conflict with our view of science or human nature, or are internally inconsistent and thus reveal a willingness to stretch the truth. When I heard all of the talk about how Saddam Hussein was a threat to the U.S. homeland, I had questions about why anyone cagey enough to stay in power in the mid east would be stupid enough to commit suicide by using wmds against the most wmd'd country in the world. When I heard that he was arm-in-arm with the terrorists, I had questions about why he would suddenly team up with those whose clerics he'd been brutally killing for decades, and why they'd team up with him? When I heard the "mushroom cloud" talk, I thought that was way over the top in terms of a "sudden threat." Those and similar statements from the very top people in our Administration raised the possibility, and eventually the conviction, that someone was selling snake oil. When it became apparent that they wanted to short circuit the U.N. and the inspection process, more alarm bells went off. Eventually I became convinced that anyone who needed to create a surge for war with fear inducing overstatements about imminent threats, must have already concluded that objectively viewed facts would probably not support the war decision they were asking us to support. My view was, therefor, that I was being hyped by people that KNEW the truth and had concluded that they needed to exaggerate in order to make the sale. That's not guessing; that's an understanding of human nature.