[QUOTE=jseal I will grant you that the incident count’s negative trend line in the “good times” (1989 – 1997) is qualified by the casualties’ (fatality & injury) positive one.[/quote]

Actually, that wasn't my point at all. My point was that the numbers between 1989 and 1997 aren't relevant. We didn't start this doctrine of pre-emptive defense until 2001. All previous numbers (ALL of them) serve only as a baseline. And they're only useful insofar as the situation surrounding them is stable. As I said initially, these raw numbers are just not terribly useful in complex analyses.



I think they're each differently informative, eww....don't lke my new phrase...but I'm gonna leave it.



Not technically. The null hypothesis (you're a stats man, right? I'm not trying to blind you with jargon) is that there is an effect. You can't prove a negative...I can never prove an absense of effect, you've given me an unreasonable standard. A statistician would demand that the test be to prove the null hypothesis, something you agree that the stats as we have them have failed to do. The conclusion then is that the WOT has not YET had a positive effect on terror. That it may have a long range effect is possible, but there are arguments both for and against it...you're failling to weigh both. Or if you are, you've made a conclusion behind the scenes. Cool, but I weigh the evidence differently. My interpretation is that it will get worse.

So what makes this different than a conflict about who's gonna win the world series? I DO have evidence of extrodinary costs, and we agree there is as yet no evidence of benefit. I do biomedical research, and we're very careful to remember that sometimes a short range cost/benefit analysis can be misleading (chemo)...but we also have the option to test the treatments before administering them to large populations. Here, we have to be more careful...we can't just "try this conventional warfare approach" in order to be seen to be doing something in case it works. We have to have the evidence of effect to justify the cost and counterbalance the contrasting expectations.



Find me someplace I said we shouldn't be dealing with it? I said that conventional warfare was counterproductive. It's the wrong paradigm.



I don't think you MEANT to call me a terrorist supporter, so I won't quite tell you to go screw yourself. That was very nearly over the line.




And when the political statement is "don't mess with the USA?"



Hell, Hon...you and the president don't seem able to agree about the cause of that particular invasion. But as much as you want to disown it, I think you're stuck with it. One of the costs of fighting this war on a tactic is that the war fervor will be misused.

Something else I'm not sure we agree on. the Taliban were awful, we agree on that. But one of the dangers in your approach is that you confuse promulgating democracy with erradicating terrorism. Did we do a good thing? Not clear yet. Has it fixed the terror problem? Not clear yet.

I know you want to believe it's working...but reading me the list of why it should work isn't the same as demonstrating that it has. Especially when you refuse to admit that the WOT is the best damned recruiting tool the terrorist camps have ever had. The US intelligence community says so. I can give you a stack of reports hip high that tell me why all sorts of my experiments should have worked. Right up to the point where they didn't.



OK, short of drowning you in old news stories, I'm obviously not going to convince you that the whitehouse has had a connection between Iraq and the WOT since long before they invaded. Go reread the pre-war state of the union, Cheney's speaches...or just look at the way that FOX is reporting it. If the word Iraq comes out of the talking head's mouth...WOT is on the screen. And yes, because the whitehouse isn't jumping up and down saying "no no no, they're not the same thing" I do hold them responsible for FOX.

But it's more than that, you're just plain wrong. That same day Powell stood up in front of the UN with the pictures of trucks passing warehouses and claimed it was intelligence, he had a flowchart showing how Hussein had indirect ties with Al Queda. I was NOT the only person playing "seven degrees of Kevin Bacon/Sadam Hussein" that week, did you miss it?

We were worried he had them. That they could reach England. AND THAT HE WOULD SELL THEM TO TERRORISTS. Go reread the transcripts when you're done with the state of the union. I remember the whole thing being clearly reported by the BBC, don't know how you missed it.




I read your references. They aren't ANY of them relevant. No, there are no WMD in Iraq. We know that. We agree on that. But reiterating it doesn't change the fact that there are issues those articles weren't addressing. You're going round the houses, and missing the point.




With weapons inspectors on the ground, in the country, saying the job was getting done and that it would take them another 12 months? Yes. Yes I would have waited. For the record, rhetorical questions are only really effective in sermons.




Yes. We bombed them. But there WERE Americans on the ground for many of the final battles....there are still Americans there now. I don't know who you're quoting about "flat out" battles...it wasn't my phrase. We directed the war. We dropped bombs. We orchestrated a change in power. We're still there trying to stabalize the government. You want to tell the families of the troops who died there we weren't "really" involved?




Along THAT dimension. But possibly not in the grand scheme, if you look at the bigger picture. By giving them the propaganda they so very much wanted, our victory was pyrhic at best.

Look...I get that you don't agree with me. But please don't think I'm failing to understand your points. I do understand them, and I think you're right about some of them, as far as they go. But I don't think you're letting the whole picture be part of the discussion. In my world, we'd say you were cherry picking your data to get the conclusions you wanted. Unless you're willing to admit the possibility that your theory is wrong after all....you're not really being fair to the subject.

I'm willing to admit that down the road this might work. But I have NO evidence to believe that outcome is likely. There is evidence that it isn't working the way we expected. And whether you admit that the war in Iraq is linked with the WOT, you HAVE to admit that the terrorists are using it to justify their actions...if we didn't link it, they sure as hell did. The long term benefits are NOT guranteed, and the short term costs are too big to justify continuing the methods we've chosen. If there was evidence that ON THE WHOLE the approach was working, well....I think you're still morally on shakey ground. But at least you'ld have pragmatic support. Now you've got neither.

In any case, I think we've reached the tail chasing part of our program. I'll relinquish the last word to you. PM me if you want to continue on anything specific.

G