http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2007/05/bush_in_line_of_1.html

Bush In Line of Fire

May 24, 2007 1:50 PM

ABC's Ann Compton reports: An outdoor news conference in perfect spring weather, with birds chirping loudly in the magnolia trees, is not without its hazards.

As President Bush took a question Thursday in the White House Rose Garden about scandals involving his Attorney General, he remarked,

"I've got confidence in Al Gonzales doin' the job."

Simultaneously, a sparrow flew overhead and left a splash on the President's sleeve, which Bush tried several times to wipe off.

Deputy White House Press Secretary Dana Perino promptly put the incident through the proper spin cycle, telling ABC News,

"It was his lucky day...everyone knows that's a sign of good luck."

http://juancole.com/2006/04/exit-plans-senator-john-kerry-argues.html

The six neighbors have the highest stakes in Iraq-- Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Syria, Turkey and Iran. They should immediately be called to a 6 + 3 meeting with the United States, Britain and the Arab League to begin the work of constituting a post-US multinational force that might hope to keep ethnic and religious militias from marching against one another in the thousands and killing milions.

Exit is easy. Exit with honor will be the hardest thing the United States of America has ever done in its over two centuries of history. Exit without honor will endanger the security of the United States for decades.

- - posted by Juan @ 4/05/2006 11:43:00 AM

The best reason to stay until 2009 is that exiting Iraq in the least bad way (there ain't no good way) is too important to be entrusted to Bush and Cheney. And perhaps couldn't be accomplished by them even if they suddenly became competent.

Juan Cole's plan isn't to have a foreign police force in Iraq. The local police must be Iraqis, and, unfortunately, that wouldn't prevent small scale massacres.

The point of Juan Cole's plan is to try to prevent large scale genocide and to prevent all out civil war, by means of a multi-national garrisoned force with the aim of stopping large scale massings and movements of the various militias, but except for that essential task the foreigners would be staying inside their garrisons.

As a resident of the USA, I should be afraid of those who target the USA. It's absurd denialism to say, as Mister Greenwald does, that I shouldn't fear Al Qaeda, but of course that kind of absurd denialism is his stock in trade.

He tries to distract me with his sleight-of-hand and say that I should fear those Americans who would target foreign civilians, but that's absurd. Why should I worry about the targeting of foreigners? That couldn't possibly endanger me. On the contrary, that's the kind of thing that makes the world scared and respectful of the USA and therefore keeps me safe.

Also, people in the USA who favor targeting civilians are doing it in for a good cause - - in defense of western civilization -- while the Muslims are favoring violence "in defense of Islam" -- that is, for a bad cause.

So Mister Greenwald is comparing apples and pomegranates.

Heh.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjunction_fallacy

The conjunction fallacy is a logical fallacy that occurs when it is assumed that specific conditions are more probable than general ones.

The most oft-cited example of this fallacy originated with Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman:

Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations.

Which is more likely?
1. Linda is a bank teller.
2. Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.

85% of those [educated people!] asked chose option 2.

However, mathematically, the probability of two events occurring together (in "conjunction") will always be less than or equal to the probability of either one occurring alone . . .

. . . Many other demonstrations of this error have been studied. In another experiment, for instance, policy experts were asked to rate the probability that the Soviet Union would invade Poland, and the United States would break off diplomatic relations, all in the following year. They rated it on average as having a 4% probability of occurring. Another group of experts was asked to rate the probability simply that the United States would break off relations with the Soviet Union in the following year. They gave it an average probability of only 1%.

Researchers argued that a detailed, specific scenario seemed more likely because of the "representativeness heuristic," but each added detail would actually make the scenario less and less likely. In this way it could be similar to the "misleading vividness" or "slippery slope" fallacies.

- - Wikipedia

The conjunction fallacy seems to be wired into most of us, though some of us may try to be aware of it and to avoid it.

One of the implications for survey research is that survey respondents are likely, without being conscous of their fallacies, to say that they're never in favor of, say, targeting civilians under any (vaguely imagined) circumstances, and then go on to admit to the pollster that they favor targeting civilians under a particular (and vividly imagined) circumstance (to end WW2 in Japan, to defeat Israel, to defeat Al Qaeda, etc.).

Humans are quite capable of endorsing blanket rules and, simultaneously, not endorsing them.

Humans aren't built to be logical.

So don't assume that all of the people who are "never" in favor of something are actually never in favor of it.

What never?

No never!

What never?

Well - - - - hardly ever.

I'm not sure if Lynx caught on that I was doing a parody.

By the way, the scary thing is that I was directly plagiarizing a blog known as "The Moderate Voice".