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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elroy who wrote (54777)	1/31/2007 10:11:28 AM
From: TimF	Respond to of 90947

You want a new plan, but no ability to measure success/failure of the new plan? That is plain stupid, my friend. I'm not sure too many people outright don't want the data, and they certainly don't want "no ability to measure the success/failure of the new plan". They just think the data you ask for would be rather problematic (esp. in the short run) as a way to measure the success and failure. Reasons for that belief include 1 - The data itself would be uncertain, even if there is no deliberate distortion of it. 2 - The data could be manipulated. 3 - The data could be as accurate as possible, but be presented in distorted ways for example by selecting picking time periods and/or areas to use in an argument. 4 - The data has to be considered in a rather complex context of what's going on in the country, but it would tend to be presented (by whichever side of the debate it seems to favor) as a simple comparison of two numbers. 5 - Related to #4 - The data could be given too much weight. It isn't a perfect or total measure of what is happening even if its honest and accurate. 6 - To the extent the data, and specific planned reactions to it, are public knowledge, they would also be known by the enemy. If American forces are going to be scaled back or pulled out if the data turn out bad, then the enemy has an incentive to make the data look bad, even if doing so is very costly to them. This might escalate the conflict in the short term, and in the medium term allow the operations of the enemy to distort the information we use, and in effect manipulate our strategic decision making. Depending on how large of factor you think these problems would be it might even make sense to not want the data, it would certainly make sense to consider not put too much importance on the data, and to not have any specific advanced plans based on what the data shows over a given time period.