Zar

I thought "absence of evidence was not evidence of absence" according to our illustrious War Leader Donald Rumsfeld. I think sir-drinks-a-lot wants to murder everyone who doesn't agree with him. I have no evidence, but I'm convinced. He has every reason to hate us, because he has objected to our probing questions and declarations. sir-drinks-a-lot, prove that you are not going to kill us all! If you cannot prove it, we will be forced to destroy your neighborhood.

(For the completely idiotic, this is all a joke, of course.)

DoubleDutchy

Can you post a link to where you "conclusively demonstrate" that you yourself had nothing to do with 9/11?
Watch your steps sir drinks-a-lot. We have an eye on you.

sir drinks-a-lot

The onus is on the person making the claim. In this case, it is on Koyaanisqatsi, who claims that he can prove that Saddam Hussein was not involved in 9/11.

"As arch-skeptic Carl Sagan himself said, absence of evidence is
not evidence of absence. If someone wants to rule out vistations
by extra-terrestrial aliens, it would not be enough to point out
that all the evidence presented so far is either seriously flawed
or not very strong. It would be necessary to state definite
reasons which would make ET visitations either impossible or
highly unlikely. (He might, for example, point out that our best
understanding of physics pretty much rules out any kind of
effective faster-than-light drive.)"

source.

Blixy Sticks

father,

You have succeeded. It is a bright, bright, bright....sun-shiny day!!! Thank God I applied my spf 40 in the nick of time.

yaktldg

sir: The onus is on the person making the claim. In this case, it is on Koyaanisqatsi, who claims that he can prove that Saddam Hussein was not involved in 9/11.

sir, but we're dealing with law. So, isn't everyone innocent (needless of proof) until proven guilty?

yaktldg

In other words, you can't quote Carl Sagan in court and expect to get a conviction.

Certainly the same principle applies to justifying mass murder by war.

Even if god told you Hussein masterminded 9-11, there is zero justification for retribution without proof.

Gurdur

:notworthy

Zar

sir-drinks-a-lot,

Why do you keep repeating the same erroneous point? You are not addressing any of the objections. Your "broken record" behavior demonstrates that you are desperate, and that you are utterly mistaken. Do you think that if you repeat something often enough it becomes true, such as that 2 + 2 = 5?

gqtie says that in matters of law, the principle is innocent until proven guilty. Although this is correct, it is not nearly saying enough. Why do you think innocent until proven guilty is the norm? Because in matters of any area of human understanding of fact, at least some evidence is required to make any claim. Making claims without evidence opens the door to infinite mischeif and error. Anything goes. IT is a fundamental epistemological issue that drives the construction of lawfulness. There is no evidence in this case. What you are demanding that we assent to defies all logic and reality. It is an impossibility.

Of course, you can still act on no evidence whatsoever. There is no invisible barrier preventing you from acting unjustly to kill anyone you don't like on trumped-up charges, but don't torture language and do criminal violence to our concepts by trying to claim that injustice is justified. You have borrowed Orwellian doublethink straight from Donald Rumsfeld and you very well know it. I implore you to stop this.

A lot of irresponsible people in our government know very well there is no evidence, which is why they have given up citing the evidence in favor of constantly co-joining Iraq with the "War on Terror" in a loose and nebulous way. They never "correct" anyone who thinks Iraq comitted the 9/11 attacks because it serves their purposes to let people be wrong. They hope to trick the average citizen into putting the two things in their mind at the same time. And given the kind of mind that can decide things in this way, it predictably clings to such nonsense tenaciously, being utterly terrified to wake up to the idea that it went along with mass murder for no good reason. Instead of correcting themselves, they will continue to allow future atrocities and injustice to reign. Piles and piles of bodies and broken countries are of no importance next to a simple matter of correcting themselves, which is the ultimate horror.

Proxima Centauri

Before the war I insisted I did not know enough. Only those with access to clasified information knew if the war was a just war or not.
Now with hind sight I think the war was a just war. I'm sorry for those Iraqis who were killed. The number of deaths was still smaller than the number who would have been tortured and killed by Saddam or died of starvation in one year if Saddam's tyranny had continued.
I've seen on my television how the people of Iraq are pleased to be rid of Saddam. I've seen them tearing down Saddam's statues. I'm pleased we made it possible for them to do that.

Zar

B.Shack,

So, this whole past year, you think George Bush has been putting his presidency on the line, dragging the nation kicking and screaming, racking up debts, ignoring the economy, killing international law and international relationships, destroying our Constitutional rights, and otherwise screwing things up royally just so that we could do what a certain percentage of Iraqi people wanted done, which is simply for the United States to fight a civil war for them?

Utterly absurd.

EDIT: Here's an interesting piece I just found which echoes my thoughts on this:

Keep your eye on the ball