Nick Arnett and JDG debate endlessly: > >> All are quotations: >> >> We judge that Iraq has... chemical and biological weapons. (5) > > Weapons, yes. But don't be misled into thinking this means weapons > of mass destruction. The NIE makes it clear that it does not. > (blah blah blah)
I think it's all a matter of probabilities. You can both agree that, before the War of Conquest [:-)], the best Intelligence could say was that there was a probability p, 0 < p < 1, that Iraqi had WMD, and another probability p', 0 < p' < 1, that Iraqi will deploy a WMD in the USA. [it's not true that p' > p in general: many countries have WMDs but don't seem likely to use them]. Also, there is a reasonable threshold probability p*, 0 < p* < 1, for which the War is justified whenever p' >= p*. Until you can give numbers to p, p' and p*, this discussion will never finish :-P For example, replace "Saddam" for "Hugo Chavez". What are p, p' and p*? I bet p is almost zero, p' is also a very small number, so that, even if p* is small, a War on Venezuela is not justified. OTOH, replace "Saddam" for "Hezbollah", put yourself in the position of Israel, and those probabilities will be totally different: the best estimations of p' are below p*! Alberto Monteiro _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
