You're definitely missing something here, Bobby. Not that it comes as a surprise.

Day 1 and Day 2 = same belief held.

It's really quite simple. He believes it's highly likely US troops planted WMD in Iraq but he doesn't believe it happened.

All you have to do is hit your head repeatedly with a hard object and it will begin making sense.

in other words, he has no evidence to support his opinion. the facts of the case make it completely illogical and unreasonable to continue holding his opinion. so he'll ignore them in the vain hope that reality will change to reconfirm his delusional world view. nope. nothing insane about that.

^ yawn. anyways, "the" wmd have not been found right bobby?

Hey, Bobby. Do me a favour. Show something that negates the possibility that they were planted.

And cynic, you have this habit that's been observed countless times of drawing people into flame-wars if you disagree with their opinion. You do this by deliberately (I say deliberately because I'd like to think you're not as dim as you portray yourself) misconstruing what the person says to fit your game. I apologize, but I refuse to play. If you are capable of engaging in adult debate, I will oblige. But I've little time to play this tiresome game.

Call me insane. Ignore the countless times I've repeated that there is a possibility the WMD were planted. Type to see yourself type if that's what gets you off. I've got better things to do than discuss politics with the equivalent of an attention-starved child.

Show something that negates the possibility that they were planted.

Calling you insane isn't so much of a flame as it is a legitimate observation. But I'll get to that later. For now, here is more than enough evidence to negate your "possibility."

1) These were old, degraded munitions.

2) The department of Defense stated that they could not be used for the purpose they were designed, thus they were not the WMD we were looking for.

3) The Bush administration's own report addressed these types of finds, stating that old degraded munitions had been found but that they were not the deployable WMD that we went to war over.

4) Bush never even tried to use these WMD to support his decision to go to war.

5) In 2004, Bush actually stated "The chief weapons inspector, Charles Duelfer, has now issued a comprehensive report that confirms the earlier conclusion of David Kay that Iraq did not have the weapons that our intelligence believed were there,"

7) Even Fox News, the most biased conservative news outlet in the world, stated that these are not the WMD we were looking for.

Now do you have a single shred of evidence to support your opinion? No, you don't. So if you're not going to refute or even acknowledge reality, let's get back to questioning your sanity. Like everything else in this thread, this next bit of information will be lost on you. But some others here may be wondering, 'why is jason such a ****ing nut?" Well, let's see why Jason is such a ****ing nut.

According to many psychologists, a person who believes in one conspiracy theory is often a believer in other conspiracy theories and conversely for a person who does not believe in one conspiracy theory there is a lower probability that he will believe in another one.

Psychologists believe that the search for meaningfulness features largely in conspiracism and the development of conspiracy theories. That desire alone may be powerful enough to lead to the initial formulation of the idea. Once cognized, confirmation bias and avoidance of cognitive dissonance may reinforce the belief. In a context where a conspiracy theory has become popular within a social group, communal reinforcement may equally play a part.

Jason,

I brought your contradiction up for a reason which had nothing to WMD.

I was just testing to see if when you initiated a point, whether you were a person of principle and admitted an obvious blunder. Even your large support group of leftists who normally jump right into the melee are keeping out because this is so obvious.

I was really hoping you made the right judgement call, because I would have taken your points with a bit more notice going forward.

As for....

quote:

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Hey, Bobby. Do me a favour. Show something that negates the possibility that they were planted.

---

See the DickSS example. Sure... I'll show you this as soon as you show me something that negates the possibility that if a butterfly in China happened to flap its wings three seconds longer you would have been arrested for cocaine use.

See the DickSS example. Sure... I'll show you this as soon as you show me something that negates the possibility that if a butterfly in China happened to flap its wings three seconds longer you would have been arrested for cocaine use.

No one has thus far been able to negate the possibility that the WMD may have been planted there. Are you able to, or not?

If you can negate the possibility, I will stand down on it being a possibility.

Although I have to admit, I am somewhat amused by cynic's rantings in this thread. Rant on, man. Rant on.

quote:

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No one has thus far been able to negate the possibility that the WMD may have been planted there. Are you able to, or not?

If you can negate the possibility, I will stand down on it being a possibility.

---

You already demonstrated that you wouldn't even admit to your own contradiction, so until then I don't see much flexibility on your part.

Additionallly, you are leaning towards a "possibility" based on no circumstantial evidence other than your bias. One can easily whip up the most outlandish possibility, what good does that do?

As far as WMD is concerned, even if in the headlines tomorrow announced that they found 500 nuclear weapons, you think any of the anti-American CVers would change their stance? Of course not. We already saw a sample of that on this thread.

Apparently the voice of reason sounds like a rant to the mentally disturbed. If you want to see what a real rant looks like, here it is.


I'm not going to be surprised at all if this story does become credible. It's been long predicted that WMD would be planted, oops...discovered in Iraq after there was none found.

Does anyone else find it convenient that these canisters have been found since 2003, but the Administration has just been taking flak over not finding WMD over these years...because they were waiting for the papers to be finalized.

The plant has arrived via santorum.

(Oh, and by the way...Savage Love has made "Santorum" into a wonderful noun.)

If you're at all curious how sane people reach a conclusion, here are some helpful tools for you to evaluate your delusions:

The truth of a conspiracy theory

Perhaps the most contentious aspect of a conspiracy theory is the problem of settling a particular theory's truth to the satisfaction of both its proponents and its opponents. Particular accusations of conspiracy vary widely in their plausibility, but some common standards for assessing their likely truth value may be applied in each case:

Occam's razor - is the alternative story more, or less, probable than the mainstream story? Rules of thumb here include the multiplication of entities test.

Psychology - does the conspiracy accusation satisfy an identifiable psychological need for its proposer?

Methodology - are the "proofs" offered for the argument well constructed, i.e., using sound methodology? Is there any clear standard to determine what evidence would prove or disprove the theory?

Whistleblowers - how many people–and what kind–have to be loyal conspirators?

Given that you can provide no evidence to support your argument and that you've ignore completely the facts of the case that make your argument illogical, the mainstream story is far more probable. Why would the US government plant something that gives them no political or moral gain?

You obviously have some sort of psychological need to believe what you believe.

And your methodology is in no way sound. You have offered no "proofs" to support your argument. At this point, you argument is that if you ignore reality you can believe whatever you like. The technical terms are confirmation bias and avoidance of cognitive dissonance.

After reading through most of this thread and having been admonished for perpetuating some vast conspiracy of my own by Neu I did a Google search of "conspiracy characteristics". The second result was from a "para-political" (in other words conspiracy) site with an article titled "Conspiracy Theories and Clandestine Politics". A couple of passages that I found of interest are...

Only the academic literature dealing with specialized topics like espionage, covert action, political corruption, terrorism, and revolutionary warfare touches upon clandestine and covert political activities on a more or less regular basis, probably because such activities cannot be avoided when dealing with these topics. But the analyses and information contained therein are rarely incorporated into standard works of history and social science, and much of that specialized literature is itself unsatisfactory. Hence there is an obvious need to place the study of conspiratorial politics on a sound theoretical, methodological, and empirical footing, since ignoring the influence of such politics can lead to severe errors of historical interpretation.

First of all, like many other intellectual constructs, conspiracy theories help to make complex patterns of cause-and-effect in human affairs more comprehensible by means of reductionism and oversimplification. Secondly, they purport to identify the underlying source of misery and injustice in the world, thereby accounting for current crises and upheavals and explaining why bad things are happening to good people or vice versa. Thirdly, by personifying that source they paradoxically help people to reaffirm their own potential ability to control the course of future historical developments. After all, if evil conspirators are consciously causing undesirable changes, the implication is that others, perhaps through the adoption of similar techniques, may also consciously intervene to protect a threatened way of life or otherwise alter the historical process. In short, a belief in conspiracy theories helps people to make sense out of a confusing, inhospitable reality, rationalize their present difficulties, and partially assuage their feelings of powerlessness. In this sense, it is no different than any number of religious, social, or political beliefs, and is deserving of the same serious study.

Conspiracy theories are like black holes--they suck in everything that comes their wa