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To: belmont_mark
Your critique of the reference materials is quite disingenuous.

Wow. I point out just how crappy your sources are, and you get all snippy about it.

Granted, some of them might have flaws.

Some?

Try "most." And they're nontrivial flaws at that.

However, in your blanket dismissal, you have also encompassed a number of substantial and widely respected sources.

Just because Yossef Bodansky is able to generate media buzz doesn't mean that he's honest. And ol' Bodansky is the most prolific of your citations...

How widely something is reported is not synonymous with the factuality of said reporting.

He's been caught making stuff up in his "biography" of Osama bin Laden. When he did that, he lost more than a little bit of credibility with me.

You would gain more advantage in this debate if you would use a point-counterpoint construction with respect to specific things within the sources.

You would gain more advantage in this debate if you actually cited relevant material, instead of posting a link.

"Throw a bunch of stuff on the wall and pray that it sticks" is a fine debating technique for Democrats. Unlike Democrats, I have a brain. Tango Sierra.

While, in my agitation and frustration with the cumulative series of posts you have made for the past couple of years, where you consistently oppose any call to build up the US military, or, to explore scenarios that involve war between great powers, I momentarily slithered into the ad hominem nether regions, you have landed there squarely and cannot seem to extract yourself.

Look, buddy. Make your point. Salvoing links isn't making a point, it's expecting others to do your homework for you.

If you wish me to do your homework for you, please be advised that I charge--and routinely get paid--$150 an hour plus ODCs for independent consultation, and that I have an 80-hour minimum. 50% down, I go into work as soon as the check clears, the balance is due upon your receipt of the deliverables.

For the benefit of the forum, I challenge you to extract specific items from each of the references, and to make your logical arguments, if any, in refutation of them.

For the benefit of the forum, I challenge you to extract specific items from each of the references, and to make your logical arguments, if any, in support of them.

This is the characteristic of any truly far reaching and open minded analyst.

Actually, the defining characteristic of the far-reaching and open-minded analyst is the ability to filter BS quickly.

60 posted on 02/19/2003 8:16:48 PM PST by Poohbah (Beware the fury of a patient man -- John Dryden)
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To: Poohbah; belmont_mark; rightwing2; backhoe; Travis McGee; Alamo-Girl
Actually, the defining characteristic of the far-reaching and open-minded analyst is the ability to filter BS quickly.

What a load of B.S.

That is the hallmark of the narrow-minded, and prejudiced. And the guy who is setting himself...and his nation up for being surprised. It is an attitude of hubris that was previously epitomized by the French Generals (and policy-makers) prior to the German offensive that did their classic blitzkrieg against France...and with smaller and less capable forces (on paper) made mincemeat out of the French Army.

Your thesis accuses the Right of being unduly alarmist about revolutionary technological upgrades in the military forces of avowed adversaries of our nation, when we have 34 items higher on some list of priorities we should be addressing for security.

While I grant that there are some things we should be doing that we are not, usually some economic competition between allocation of resources is NOT the issue. The failure to be doing the other necessary things is usually a result of willful obstructionism by certain security-blind political forces (i.e., such as open-border illegal Mexican migrants, or the almost ostrich-like refusal to allow pilots to pack heat).

101 posted on 02/20/2003 7:05:18 PM PST by Paul Ross (From the State Looking Forward to Global Warming! Let's Drown France!)
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