Decius wrote:
No, I'm not asking for faith or support. Only objectivity. While its difficult to avoid assuming that they are lying the seriousness of the consiquences demand that their claims fall on facts rather than assumptions.

If I've learned anything at all as I've aged it's that facts are goddamn hard to come by unless you yourself are physically present.

You know as well as anyone that in all other situations you are left with your best guess based on an objective analysis of information you are given after applying a trustworthiness function of some kind to the source of that information.

Don't talk to me about facts. Neither of us are in a position to KNOW facts. Any report that's being issued from the white house receives an extremely low mark on my trust meter and I am astonished that it doesn't rate likewise on yours.

It has sounded to me like you are genuinely arguing that I should trust this information. You say that my inability to trust this information represents a lack of objectivity. If being objective means not allowing anything that's ever happened in the past to affect my judgment, I may as well give up and become a fucking puppet.

I can't make this any clearer. If the surge has had a substantive effect, I expect I will hear about it from sources that are not limited to the white house. If those sources are trustworthy, I'll happily change my tune. The fact that I don't expect that to happen doesn't mean I am going to dismiss evidence that it has.

As for the consequences, I concur that they are severe, which is all the more reason not to allow a demonstrably incompetent, dishonest and destructive administration to run amok without some clear, objective (that is, third party, at a minimum) evidence that they've finally done something right.

RE: Obsidian Wings: Bush's Speech