"We'll never really know"
Ron Coleman
In the comments on Dave Schuler's post in this thread, Mikeca says:
I am skeptical that we will ever know the truth about Scott Beauchamp story. The only way we could ever know the truth is if Scott Beauchamp were to confess that he made the stories up or some of the other people involved were to confess that the stories were true. I think it is unlikely either of those will happen, so I suspect we will never really know.
This deserves treatment on the "front page." A number of commenters jumped right on this, mocking the concept that seemed to be in play here — "what, really, is truth"? Indeed, it is the idea that "everyone has his own truth" that makes mass murderers "freedom fighters" and Nobel Prize winners.
But while this is true, that is not the real problem with this formulation. It's not the "what is truth" fallacy. It's the "we can never know anythig without video tape" fallacy, or the "you can't prove a negative" fallacy. (To some extent these are related to the entire phony amateur atheist mindset about the religious, but I digress.)
There is very, very little we know in this life from direct evidence, i.e., first-hand observation. We move on by marshaling enough proof in one direction or another to convince us, usually more or less at the level of what lawyers call a preponderence of the evidence, i.e., "more likely than not."
I don't "know," for example, that Dwight Eisenhower didn't marry Eva Braun, and I can "never really know that he didn't" in the most literal sense of the words. But there's not a shred of proof that he did; anyone who said that he did is almost certainly a flake; and everyone else in a position to know would swear that he didn't. Do I still "not really know"?
(By the way, as I mentioned in the comments earlier in the chain, I think this is the real reason for TNR's recklessness here.)
We must get this straight, because "we'll never really know" is the stuff of which the looniest, and most damaging, conspiracy theories are made. Not only that: This false reasoning stands between us and the ability of reasonable people with different views to discuss any issues whatsoever. If we can't agree on basic facts, premised on a decent respect for human experience, all dialog is meaningless, isn't it?
Related Posts (on one page):
The "we'll never know" argument swings both ways and truthfully critical thinking in it's classic practice already has a back up plan for this condition. The strongest assumption. It's what prosecutors fall on when they have damning, but circumstantial evidence. "We'll never know" is the trigger for this and causes investigation if assumption is not enough to satisfy a majority consensus. Investigation ferrets out more fact to base an argument on more often than not. "We'll never know" is not a falsehood in the literal sense. There are somethings we will just never know, but that is precisely why we do assume a conclusion rather than letting it lie completely.
I think it's the very strong likelihood of the complete lie versus the conclusive assumption of absolute truth that Ron is objecting to.
That is to say that in Europe "What is Truth?" is the kinda assumptive conclusion that most folks can take to be verite au naturel, if not entirely objectively verifiable.
But in America people can still conclusively object to a subjective lie and nobody has to necessarily assume there's anything wrong with that.
Then again I guess I could be falsifiably wrong. We may never know.
Yeah, but monologue still gets along pretty well.
I think this flap says a lot more about the people who are swarming all over this issue.
As to my offhand statement Ron quoted, I meant that we would never have enough evidence that most reasonable people will agree that is the “truth.”
I doubt that Scott Thomas will admit that he lied, because that would just make worse whatever the army is going to do to him, so he would have no motive to admit he lied. Likewise, no one else in his company is going to admit that the stories were true, especially his sergeant, because that would mean that they also failed to report these incidents or were directly involved in them. Since I don’t see where there is much physical evidence to be investiaged, I suspect we will never have enough evidence to convince everyone.
The people inclined to believe Scott Thomas will continue to believe him. The people inclined to doubt Scott Thomas will continue to doubt him.
Truth is when even the people inclined not to believe something, agree that it is most likely true.
So if I'm pulled over for speeding, is it okay for the cop to make up charges of driving without a seatbelt, failing to obey a traffic signal, driving with a broken tail-light, and having expired registration? We can never really know that I didn't do these things, we know I'm a lawbreaker (since I was speeding) and so these things wouldn't be out of character for me, and they're not as important as the initial charge. If this happened to you, would you simply be offended, or would you consider the situation atrocious and file suit?
Abu Ghraib shouldn't have happened, I'll agree to that, because it gave our enemies an easy piece of propaganda. But to call it atrocity is to make light of real atorcities.
Not much, but Iraq isn't some Edwin Abbot creation - it's a physical, peopled landscape.
Kevin, 'every fraternity' doesn't have people dying in their rooms and having fake IV's put in when they're discovered to cover up the abuse. Nor are the students forced to rape each other at gunpoint.
You clearly don't know what is going on in fraternities. What happened in that prison is clearly pretty atrocious. Not the scale, of course, but the events individually were enough to make the administration keep the evidence secret for as long as possible.
F*ck. I'm asking for my dues back...
Horsefeathers. Ridiculous claptrap. Abu Ghraib is a prison. It needs to be compared to, get this, prisons. It wasn't an atrocity. That does make light of real atrocities. It wasn't a fraternity. It was much worse. Our fraternities are like prisons in the same way that fireworks are like suicide bombers. It was a prison scandal. I'd really like all prisons to be cleaned up, not just Abu Ghraib. And I'd really like more done to prevent prisoner on prisoner crime, not just guard on prisoner crime.
Yours,
Wince
In case you've forgotten, the military informed the media they were investigating the abuses long before they ran with the stories. From what I recall, the media ignored it until they got the photos. When the media ignores a story after being told about it, I just can't see that as "keeping the evidence secret".
Okay Rush, whatever. Seriously, comparing the stories here to Abu Ghraib is absurd. What those soldiers did was inappropriate and wrong. Period. I've been through frat hazing and this does not compare. Not at all.
Look I know people who have been to war and my family has numerous members that have served in the armed forces. If torture was involved in interrogation it was done discreetly and the people doing it certainly did not want to talk about it or take pictures holding a thumbs up. Most people are ashamed to some degree when they are forced to do things like that. Taking pictures and acting like it's watching a porno isn't frat behavior; it is demented and sick. Beauchamp's fictional portrayal dosen't hold a candle to what happened there. Not at all.
Yours,
Wince
If a reporter writes, “President Bush played fetch with his dog this afternoon at his ranch in Crawford,” do you think the editor is going to demand multiple sources, confirmation from the white house press office or pictures to confirm this?
On the other hand, if a reporter writes, “Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot his hunting partner in the face with a shotgun today,” you can bet that no editor is going to publish that story without very good confirmation that it is true.
So part of what is at issue here is how serious are the claims that Scott Thomas made. TNR certainly knew that Scott Thomas was a soldier in Iraq. Were the TNR editors obligated to independently verify every incident he described in this article? Most editors trust their reporters to faithfully report information, and only demand confirmation for extraordinary claims. The TNR editors did not find the incidents so extraordinary that they felt they needed confirmation before publication. The blogger critics are representing these incidents as so offensive and extraordinary that they should have been confirmed before publication.
Given what you have said before, that was not a smart argument.
In other words TNR was claiming that our troops commonly do this, so there is no need for confirmation.
And if TNR was claiming that our troops commonly do this that does impugn the integrity of our troops, and the troops who are complaining about it on their blogs have a legit complaint.
After all, we do expect the media to correctly report IED's and various sorts of battles. These are not really extraordinary events. They happen daily. Are you claiming that Beauchamp's stories are vastly more common than IED's which we expect correct reports on?
Now, by making this argument, you personally are impugning the integrity of our troops. I would hope you would find these stories at least as extraordinary as say a black NFL quarterback running just one dog fight - even though we know that there are around 1800 NFL players and some must be committing crimes. Would the facts in such a story be confirmed?
I think you should apologize. I think you have (probably inadvertantly) gone beyond the bounds of civility.
Go back over these threads and read my comments, and at least read all the questions. You are now painted into two or three corners.
Perhaps you should let someone else paint.
Yours,
Wince
I am not defending TNR. I do not read TNR. I do not support its editors one bit.
I just think that watching the pro-war blogesphere go batshit crazy over this story goes a long way to explain how desperate the pro-war side is getting. They are expending all this effort to try to kill a pro-war publication! They have clearly lost all perspective.
In this thread we have got people arguing that Abu Ghraib, where Iraqi men were forced to strip naked in front of female soldiers and perform sex acts and Iraqi women were raped, was just a fraternity initiation and no big deal. On the other hand Scott Thomas saying, perhaps falsely, that a soldier put a human skull they accidentally dug up while doing construction on his head or trying to kill a dog is deeply offensive to reputation of the army?
Wince, I never said any of the things you accuse me of saying. You have simply taken by words and twisted them beyond all recognition, and I am not going to waste my time replying, because you will just twist my reply to mean something else you can use to attack me.
Wince, I never said any of the things you accuse me of saying. You have simply taken by words and twisted them beyond all recognition, and I am not going to waste my time replying, because you will just twist my reply to mean something else you can use to attack me.
I haven't twisted your words. You made these poor arguments without realizing why they were poor and how offensive your words sounded. I was stunned that you would make such a poor argument, as if you did not remember what you said before.
Besides, there is much better analysis of why the blogosphere keeps doing this:
All of this, of course, is an attempt to replicate the one undoubted triumph of the blogospheric right, Rathergate.
Yours,
Wince
This doesn't make any sense to me.
I said: The TNR editors did not find the incidents so extraordinary that they felt they needed confirmation before publication. The blogger critics are representing these incidents as so offensive and extraordinary that they should have been confirmed before publication.
You twisted that around to say that I said that these kinds of incidents were common place.
Now you are saying that the blogosphere is trying to repeat Rathergate, and that is why the TNR editors did not confirm all the details before they published the story?
Sorry, I don’t follow that.
You made the comparison with "President Bush played fetch with his dog this afternoon at his ranch in Crawford". The editors of TNR are not present in this thread. You are presenting the arguments, not them. It's your words and your argument. Your argument is that the events in the stories were not extraordinary. That means they are ordinary, or common. No twisting required.
Now you are saying that the blogosphere is trying to repeat Rathergate, and that is why the TNR editors did not confirm all the details before they published the story?
I said that there was a much better explanation than yours about why the blogosphere keeps repeating this pattern. It's the same reason the press keeps trying to repeat Watergate. It's the desire to repeat the big triumph.
Yours,
Wince
I think you have a reading comprehension problem. I suggest you relax, let your blood pressure get back to normal, and then re-read the post slowly and carefully.
We know the TNR editors did not confirm the incidences in before publication. Some bloggers have suggested that is because the TNR editors hate the military, hate America, hate the war, ect. I am presenting what I think was the reasoning of the TNR editors. They did not think these incidences were so extraordinary, unbelievable or offensive that they needed confirmation. I never said anything about how common place I or the TNR editors may have thought these incidences were.
This argument has nothing to do with why pro-war blogs are all over this story. Wanting to repeat Rathergate is certainly part of it, but I think it is also out of desperation. The actual news coming out of Iraq is so bad it is really hard to keep up the blame the media theme. Even the administration has admitted that things have not been going too well in Iraq. That is the whole reason for the surge. If things had been going great in Iraq for the last four years we would not need the surge. Pro-war bloggers are so desperate to blame the media for the declining support for the war they are now blaming the pro-war media!!
Just as I said. Your reasoning and your arguments, that you conjectured were the reasoning of the TNR editors.
They did not think these incidences were so extraordinary, unbelievable or offensive that they needed confirmation.
Watch carefully. The sentence above is contradicted by the sentence below. Extraordinary is, err, the opposite of common place.
I never said anything about how common place I or the TNR editors may have thought these incidences were.
More common place than dog fighting? Do journalists confirm an accusation of dog fighting when it's a quaterback? Yes. How about when it's just some unknown person? Yes. More common than IED's? Do journalists confirm deadly explosions in Iraq? Yes. Do journalists confirm other animal abuse cases? Yes.
Look, when you say that these reputed incidents are not extraordinary, unbelievable or offensive and compare them to playing fetch with a dog, as if this is how soldiers play, you are being absurd and offensive.
But, hey, if you can't figure out why your arguments are inadvertantly offensive that certainly explains a great deal.
Yours,
Wince
If I say you are not skinny, I suppose you are going to claim I said you were fat.
Yours,
Wince
Think a little more about fetch, in this context.
Yours,
Wince
You either lover the military and never say anything bad about them, or you hate the military and make up wild accusations out of whole cloth.
When I said TNR editor thought the Scott Thomas “incidents are not extraordinary,” Wince says extraordinary = uncommon, so by “not extraordinary” I meant common. Now that is black and white thinking.
Now if you really look up the definition of extraordinary in the dictionary, you will see that it can also mean remarkable. So maybe by not extraordinary I meant unremarkable, but that definition doesn’t twist my words into a sinister enough statement.
The world is not black and white, it is much more colorful and nuanced. Right wing bloggers are trying to force Scott Thomas’s words into a black and white interpretation of the world so they can demonize them. Wince took my comments through his black and white filter to twist them and slander me. Five year olds have a black and white view of the universe. Adults are supposed to be able to see more shades of gray and even other colors.
I am not a lawyer. I do not play a lawyer on TV or the internet.
Anyway, I see your point now. Thanks for the clarification.
You are the one playing black and white. When I claim that you are being inadvertantly absurb and offensive you characterize that as slander. That's about as black and white on your part as you can get. How you can possibly characterize the descriptive terms "absurb" and "offensive" as black and white, particularly when qualified by "inadvertantly" is beyond me. That practically defines gray.
Futhermore you appear to be ignoring the rest of my points. You characterized Beauchamp's stories as being unextraordinary like playing fetch with a dog. Playing fetch with a dog is common. It's your words which are haunting you, mike. Are Beauchamp's stories like playing fetch with a dog? Then I gave a number of examples of arguably common events which journalists DO confirm. Are you claiming that Beauchamp's stories are less extraordinary than those? Are you sure that journalists don't routinely confirm unextraordinary stories when the subjects of the story would have reason to object? Perhaps to avoid a lawsuit?
This isn't a black and white argument about a black and white subject. It's a rather complex little argument about a difficult shade of gray.
The truth is that you have not given an answer to my arguments, or even my questions. Do you have answers, or are you going to keep changing the subject?
Yours,
Wince
BTW, I can't let this pass:
You either lover the military and never say anything bad about them, or you hate the military and make up wild accusations out of whole cloth.
I have never taken this stance. That should be apparent from this thread. See my comments about Abu Ghraib. The people who love the military do criticize the military and do criticize particular soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen. Just read milbloggers sites and you'll see this.
BTW, Abu Ghraib is a particularly good example of my gray thinking. mikca exaggerates and calls Abu Ghraib an atrocity. Kevin exaggerates and calls Abu Ghraib a frat prank. I took a grayer, more subtle stance between the two and called it prison scandal. That doesn't let the military off the hook.
At the same time, people do make up tall tales, about many subjects. Stories do grow in the telling, as you know if any of your friends are good story tellers.
Where I have drawn the line here is to say that Beauchamp's stories are offensive and extraordinary and that they are not common. To say otherwise is itself offensive and absurd. I have not maintained they are offensive and extraordinary and therefore should not be reported. I have maintained if they aren't true they should not be reported as true.
That's a pretty narrow point. I haven't drawn any grand conclusions about lefties, unlike yours about righties, mike. I did offer another grand theory about why the blogosphere is behaving like this, but it was entirely peripheral to this discussion.
Dude, I know how not to discuss things in a black and white fashion. I've shown it, right here in this thread. Do you?
Yours,
Wince
Uh? Sorry, but “absurb” is not a word. Did you mean “absurd”?
Ok, I am going to try to explain this once. I’m not very optimistic that you will understand, but I will try it once.
I gave the example of the president playing fetch with his dog as a story that was so ordinary and politically harmless that no editor would bother to confirm it, i.e. a “white” story if you like. I gave the example of the vice president accidentally shooting someone in the face as an example of a story that was so extraordinary and potentially politically damaging if untrue that and editor would always verify it, i.e. a “black” story. These are the two extremes.
Most stories fall somewhere in between, i.e. “grey” stories. On grey stories editors make judgment calls as to whether the story requires outside fact checking. The Beauchamp's stories are somewhere in that grey area and the TNR editors made a judgment that they did not require additional fact checking.
I never compared Beauchamp's stories to the president playing with this dog. Only you have made that comparison. You failed to appreciate that most stories fall somewhere in between those black and white extremes.
I think my comment was straight forward and clearly written. I don’t take responsibility for any offense taken by people who misread what I write.
I was wondering if you would ever say something like this. I was thinking of prompting you to do so.
I never compared Beauchamp's stories to the president playing with this dog. Only you have made that comparison.
This is not true. You did compare the two stories. Twice, now. You had previously failed to qualify your comparison by saying something like, "Of course Beauchamp's stories are not that innocuous." I cannot be responsible for qualifications you (repeatedly) fail to make. Particularly since I questioned you on that very point more than once. That really is about are far as my responsiblities go. I gave you that opportunity. I am stunned it took you so long to take it.
The Beauchamp's stories are somewhere in that grey area and the TNR editors made a judgment that they did not require additional fact checking.
No way. As compared to a story about someone engaging in dog fighting? Those are fact checked. What about a deadly IED? Those are fact checked.
I don’t take responsibility for any offense taken by people who misread what I write.
Clearly not. If you took responsibility you would have clarified your comments long ago instead of upping the ante. Those sort of clarifications are part and parcel of civil, moderate, grey discussions. That's the thing about civility. You have to take responsibility for it to happen.
Yours,
Wince
Wince
LOL.
I knew it was a waste of my time trying to explain it to you. Nobody could be a stupid as you were pretending to be. You understood it all along. You were just being deliberately obtuse, so you could act all indignant and pretend to be deeply offended.
Go play your silly games somewhere else.
Go play your silly games somewhere else.
You called it all wrong. I was not being obtuse at all, and I am deeply offended. I really wondered when you would clue in. It's not my responsibility to improve your arguments. After all, placing this in the gray area really weakens your defense of TNR.
Your continued inability to properly judge what I am thinking is not shocking. Nor is your silly notion that you can accurately do it. People are no darn good at figuring out what other people are thinking based on their writing. No facial clues and no tone of voice.
I still maintain that Beauchamp's stories are extraordinary and offensive. And I still maintain that your defense of those stories is absurd and offensive. It isn't as absurd and offensive as it was before you qualified your comparison of those stories to the game of fetch. It's still absurd and offensive because journalists routinely fact check much more common stories.
If, OTOH, you said that TNR make a professional error by believing that Beauchamp's stories were not extraordinary and offensive enough to require fact checks, then I would not find your defense of those stories to be absurd and offensive.
Yours,
Wince
This quote from Bryan Preston is simply wrong. We do not know whether Beuchamp was writing the truth, exaggerating the truth, or completely making stories up. The initial analysis of mili-bloggers lead them to say that the column could not have been written by a soldier that had served in Iraq or at that base. That analysis was wrong. The column was written by a soldier serving at that base. The bloggers also discovered that there was a cemetery that was unearthed during construction at that base. None of this proves Beuchamp stories are true, but it certainly proves that much of the analysis of the mili-bloggers was completely wrong.
Has Michelle Malkin fact checked this claim that is still posted on her web site? Has Bryan Preston correct this falsehood on his web site?
By the way, the whole rest of the section quoted here is hysterical nonsense. There probably were a few people who called returning soldiers ‘babykillers’ and spat on them. To suggest that this was more than a handful of deranged individuals or represented the view of the majority of Americans who were opposed to the Vietnam War is offensive to the majority of patriotic Americans who came to recognize that the Vietnam War was not in America’s national interest. Yet this is the kind diatribe you routinely find on right wing hate sites like Michelle Maklin’s.
When will Michelle Maklin or Bryan Preston apologize for slandering the majority of patriotic Americans?
Yours,
Wince
By the way, the whole rest of the section quoted here is hysterical nonsense.
Let's review (emphasis added): Note the bold-ed words. Hysterical verbiage does not use qualifiers like 'some' repeatedly. That would be the gray and careful sort of speech you claim to like. Calling the passage 'hysterical' and 'slander' would be the black and white sort of speech you claim to hate.
The attitudes described are all easy to spot among anti-war types. I've often spotted all of these on the Internet, myself. They are not easy to spot when you observe gentle, gray and careful anti-war types like my mom and dad. But they are easy to spot among the angry, black and white anti-war types. And the attitudes described are also typical Hollywood cultural memes. For every Top Gun there are a half a dozen Rambos, Platoons, Full-Metal Jackets, The Deer Hunters and of course M.A.S.H.s. For WWII movies the ratios are rather different.
Let's contrast the careful qualifications in Bryan Preston's piece with what you have written. Bryan Preston did not claim that truly rare, extraordinary and offensive criminal actions, as described in Beauchamp's stories were so unextraordinary and unoffensive that they did not require fact checking. Instead he made claims about people's speech and opinions - not criminal acts - that have been repeated in our newspapers, on TV, in the movies and on the Internet.
Congratulations. You've done it again. Instead of comparing Beauchamp's truly disgusting stories to playing fetch, you are claiming a moral equivalency with people who shoot off their mouths. You should be able to tell the difference, mike.
You should also be able to tell the difference between editorial and reporting. TNR was reporting. Beauchamp's stories should have more fact and less opinion. Preston was editorializing. That means more opinions. If you look at the quoted piece it clearly has the hallmarks of an opinion piece. Opinions can't be fact checked.
Your arguments are getting better, but you still are going all black and white on me, and your last post reinforces the inadvertent offensiveness and absurdity of your argument rather than detracting from it.
Yours,
Wince
Congratulation Wince. You have embarrassed yourself again and clearly shown your mendacity.
What the veterans and non-veterans said about Beauchamp not writing the truth was wrong and is now known to be false. Leaving this statement up on the web without correcting is a slandering Scott Beauchamp and the editors of TNR.
When are these people going to apologize for slandering Scott Beauchamp and TNR? When are you, Wince, going to apologize for putting all these slanderous, untrue statements in the comment thread?
Feel like embarrassing yourself even more, Wince?
Really? That sounds like an opinion that you are claiming as fact. This is a logical fallacy on your part. It also sounds rather, umm, black and white. See, what I've read supports what the veterans and non-veterans said about Beauchamp. It's silly to claim fact when various experts claim otherwise.
Nevertheless, I have persistently not claimed that what Beauchamp wrote was false. I'm still waiting for more shoes to drop.
But I do maintain that what Preston said was true. He made claims about the opinions of various veterans and non-veterans. Those claims are true, just like the claims that some Americans believe Saddam was behind 9/11 are true, whether or not Saddam actually was behind 9/11.
Let's see, you said: mendacity, slandering, slandering, slanderous, untrue.
Where's that lovely gray, now?
Feel like embarrassing yourself even more, Wince?
I'm not the one making the poor arguments. I'm not the one who claims to love shades of gray but can't deliver anything but black and white. And I'm not the one making offensive and absurd claims which I can't back up.
Yours,
Wince
Man Wince, you are really embarrassing yourself here. Have you actually read the Beauchamp column in TNR? Beauchamp was a TNR’s Baghdad Diarist. His columns were supposed to be diary entries. A diary is a personal record of events, experience, and observations. Diaries typically record the writer’s opinion and feelings about events.
You know Wince, you really aren’t very good at trolling.
*Munch* *Munch*
Sorry I am totally plastered now. This is cool to read however.
Finally! A stellar argument on your part. You have discovered an actual fact which I did not know.
Congratulations. Now go back and cover all the other arguments. And try to write in gray and gray this time, rather than black and white. Trolling? That's black and white, dude.
Yours,
Wince
Now let see here. There were less then 10 people who called returning troops “babykillers” and spat on them. Of the 200 million Americans that generically respect the military, 0.000005% of them called the returning troops “babykillers” and spat on them. And you think 0.000005% qualifies for the use of the word “some”?
Wouldn’t “very few” or an “an extraordinary small percentage” be a lot more accurate description of 0.000005% than “some”.
The word “some” was deliberately used here to slander all liberals and war opponents with the action of a teeny, tiny minority.
Ah! So you actually have no direct knowledge about the Vietnam War, other than what your mom and dad told you and what you have read on right wing hate sites. That explains why you are so bad at this. Hint, the right wing hate sites are not always very truthful about events.
Ah! So you actually have no direct knowledge about the Vietnam War, other than what your mom and dad told you and what you have read on right wing hate sites.
Again, a very bad attempt to read my mind. I was born in 1960, mike. I was a liberal. I voted for Carter in my first Presidential election. I voted for Gore in 2000. When I voted for Bush in 2004, that was the first time I voted Republican. Most of the things I know about the Vietnam War, I learned as a liberal, and most from books, not websites.
The word “some” was deliberately used here to slander all liberals and war opponents with the action of a teeny, tiny minority.
Now you are accusing me of slandering myself, since I was both a liberal and a peacenik at the time.
Really, mikeca, until you get a crystal ball you should avoid jumping to conclusions.
Gotcha!
BTW, you still haven't even tried to overcome your moral equivalency between criticizing someone's speech, as Preston did and hazing an injured woman, and desecrating a grave and killing a dog, like Beauchamp describes.
I'm way ahead on points. Nice to know you can land a punch when someone gives you an opening.
Oh, and BTW, your arguments are digging the hole deeper. Offensive and absurd? Yeah, that's about right.
Yours,
Wince
Yours,
Wince
You see. It’s just like I said. You are only playing games.
You know very well that most of your arguments are incoherent or mendacious. You have certainly embarrassed yourself, and you may well have even slandered yourself.
Now run along and go play your troll games somewhere else.
You know very well that most of your arguments are incoherent or mendacious. You have certainly embarrassed yourself, and you may well have even slandered yourself.
Now run along and go play your troll games somewhere else.
You got it all wrong again. When are you going to stop trying to figure out what I'm thinking and just respond to my words? I am serious that your argument is inadvertantly absurd and offensive. I am also serious that you aren't doing a very good job of discussing gray. I am occaisionally using humor and a light touch as a way to be civil.
You've been pretty insulting, mike. I've tried hard not to insult you - although I have teased you about who is winning the debate. Perhaps I have failed and you are gravely insulted. Oh well.
Yours,
Wince
That's not to say mike hasn't been above rhetorically suspect maneuvers; he has a bad habit of not just moving the goalposts, but completely changing his argument from post to post in such a way it's nearly impossible to nail him down on any one tack. Even if a correspondent does establish a specific point, mike will very nearly always up and ignore said point the next time he posts, as if it didn't exist.
Finally, when driven into a corner (as you have recently discovered) he will frequently resort to non sequitrs, and ad hominem attacks. Not always, but that's the expected value.
Let’s review one of these discussion threads.
Wince quotes a long passage that includes the statement:
I pointed out that only a handful of people ever called returning toops babykillers:
Wince responded by pointing to the word “some” that he bolded:
I responded:
Wince was response was:
Wince things this is the killer “gotcha” moment! If this passage slanders patriotic Americans who opposed the Vietnam War, then it also slanders Wince. Is that even an argument?
Well, yes, Wince, if you were opposed to the Vietnam War but generally support the military, then this passage smears you too by suggesting that you may have called returning troops ‘babykillers’ and spat on them.
It hardly seems worth discussing issues with people when they make such totally incoherent arguments.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, where people actually try to use logic, TNR has posted a status report on its investigation of the Scott Thomas Beauchamp. They found additional evidence and soldiers that supported Beauchamp’s stories except for one point. The other soldiers recall the incident where Beauchamp mocked a disfigured woman occurred at a base in Kuwait before the unit went to Iraq. Beauchamp’s diary states this incident occurred in Iraq.
TNR says it would like to collect additional information, but the Army has started an investigation and none of the soldiers will talk to TNR anymore, so we will probably have to wait for the army investigation for any more information.
Is anybody going to apologize to TNR for the mistaken charges they made about this story? I don’t think so. The right wing bloggers have already started to howl at the moon and bloviate on the evils of the editors at the Pro-Iraq war TNR for allowing errors in a not anti-war diary on the effects of war on the soldiers who have to fight it.
The pro-war movement is now so desperate for scapegoats to blame, they have to eat their own.
I am glad to find out that TNR did fact check these stories and that they have been substantiated.
Wince things this is the killer “gotcha” moment!
No, I think this is a gotcha moment where I caught you again incorrectly stating what I'm thinking. Like I said, I hope you will stop trying to figure out my thoughts.
And, BTW, gotcha, again! I didn't think that was the killer "gotcha" moment. Again, I hope you will stop trying figure out my thoughts.
You don't know me, mike. This is the internet. I could be a dog. You don't know what I am thinking.
Interestingly enough, mike, you also failed to read the TNR editor's minds. You said they didn't think the stories required fact checking. But they did think so, and they did fact check.
And so I come back to your statement about the TNR editors, which was inadvertantly absurd and insulting, and now has been shown not to be true.
Yours,
Wince
TNR may have verified, but the Army has not yet signed the mortgage papers.
From my past experience, it takes a long time for all the shoes to drop. And when they have the military usually comes out looking much better than originally reported. But maybe I'm just wearing digital camo tinted glasses.
Yours,
Wince
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.