Harold Pinter acknowledgement speech

[Occhidiangela]

In fact, it's just the kind of 'truth' formation and 'truth' obfuscation that Pinder is talking about in his Nobel address.  Going to war under false pretences is okay because the good people of America and the ideals that make them better than the infidel were at risk.  The American dream is worth saving from the infidel because it is 'true'.  No need to properly justify the taking of thousands of lives in advance - pre-emptive war on the basis of extremely shoddy risk assessment (among other things...) can always be justified after the fact because "what we believe is true, what they believe is false, and evil."  Shades of grey are for academics - the world of black and white plays into the hands of power much more usefully. 

Securing a strategically important region (read: oil-rich and unstable) out of entirely realist motives is only okay in the public's eyes if it is ostensibly carried out in the name of moral 'truth'.  The correspondent truth of the situation, the reality of the situation, is obscured by the self-righteous moral 'truth' that is sold to the people as complacency-inducing war-bait.  I'm not sure why so many folks here have a problem with Pinder's assertions about 'truth'.  It's pretty clear that societal notions of what is morally 'true' are often used to justify acts that, in reality, violate the same code by which they are superficially justified.  Once he puts it to use in his polemic, it seems to be more of an epistemological than a metaphysical point, and one with which I am inclined to agree.
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Chaer and Jester

I hate to rain on your parade, but you are doing the same thing you accuse the Bush administration of doing. You have your foregone conclusion, so you choose the facts that support your case. That is not an uncommon habit, and it is also pretty useless.

At least you two aren't sending soldiers off to get themselves killed trying to arrest President Bush so you can hang him at The Hague. ;)

Worst case planning is a requirement. I have done it. I did it for some support operations in the Bosnia NATO operation in the 90's. Worst case condsideration are mandatory when considering security affaris. They are not, of course, the only consideration.

Future outcomes and the ripple effect are another consideration that the novice and the commentator are generally blind to. Commentators, including amateurs such as myself, are too often trapped in "what happened" and conveniently are not accountable for hard and fast predictions on "in five years, this is how it will look." That accountability is levied on all decision makers. I have written policy, in both military matters, and in politico military matters (well, I wrote drafts, none of which survived unscathed) and have had to answer up for the unintended outcomes that we missed forecasting.

To sum up, decisions are always made on incomplete and imperfect information.

What is at issue with the Bush administration is the case of "blatant tunnel vision" or self delusion. It is the apparently deliberate decision to seek out facts and intelligence of a variety of quality that supported a pre concveived notion. This included such dubious stuff as the forged Italian documents.

Classifying intelligence of hard to pin down sources is a daily hazard. That is why scores of analysts and intelligence professionals are employed, to seek and find patterns and indications of reliability. The answers rarely come out 100% clear. Like with doctors, you can always get a second opinion.

That does not excuse the decision to "hear what one wants to hear and disregard the rest." Seeking the set of facts that support a worst case, when so much is unknown and uncertain considering intentions of people, is part of the process.

Please read that again. Intentions The wild card that was Saddam's intention is STILL unknown, and he's still alive. And he's not tallking, is he?

In absence of facts, one makes assumptions when crafting a plan, policy, or a strategy.

We had worst case problems with the USSR for over 40 years. Intentions were a critical problem to deal with, since given the hardware, the unknown of looking into the brain of a decision maker, for example the 1962 Cuban Missile crisis, is a completely subjective process.

What I find most appalling about the Administrations process was the continual reductionism of complex problems into allegedly simple problems, into the false dilemma of only two choices, and for that matter, acting as though assumptions were facts.

Occhi