View From the Bushes

Read this first

In the last few weeks I've been involved in a couple of really knock-down eye-gouging arguments. The first was about 12dailypro.com, the miraculous investment which would allow you to not merely retire in five years, but have all the money in the world (44% returns every 20 days, do the math). The second was last night when I got into an argument with my best friend over Iraq (probably because of the SotUA last night). He made a couple of points and I'd like to use this space to retort in writing.

One of the first things he brought up was what he called a "BBC Study" (I won't swear that he used the world study, but I was certainly left with the impression that I was being told about some kind of systematic analysis, anyway...) that showed that things were as bad in Iraq now as they were under Sadaam. He followed this up with a statment along the lines of "I know as someone from Utah you know a lot about what's going on in Iraq, but maybe the BBC has a slightly better idea." Whatever. The point is that my friend is a notorious exagerator so I asked him to send me a link to the "study" he was referring to. He pointed me to this article: Iraq abuse 'as bad as Saddam era' (notice the single quote, they'll become important, and the word "abuse"). If you read the article you'll discover that there is no study or anything like it. In fact, the BBC isn't saying anything (in the article) about the condition of Iraq -- they are reporting that former Iraqi prime minister, Iyad Allawi, said (here's where the single quote come in) was saying Iraq abuse was 'as bad as Saddam era.'

The other thing I told you to keep an eye on was "abuse." He's not saying the general situation is as bad, he's not saying as many people are dying or disappearing or being gassed, or hounded by the secret police. It's also important to consider who's saying it. Iyad Allawi was in power and (at the time the article was written) is trying to get back into power by running for office. In fact, the BBC offers this caveat:

The BBC's Jim Muir in Baghdad says Mr Allawi's remarks come as Iraq prepares for parliamentary elections next month, which he hopes could see him return as prime minister.

Now the argument isn't baseless; they did discover "170 detainees... at an interior ministry centre, some allegedly suffering from abuse and starvation." Certainly a secret prison is Saddam-esque and it appears that the abuse these prisoners suffered is as bad as the abuse prisoners suffered under Saddam, but clearly when Allawi is saying things are as a bad now as under Saddam he's talking about the degree of abuse, i.e. some prisoners have been as badly abused under this regime as they would have been under the last. He's not talking about the scale (i.e. he's not saying as many prisoners are being abused now as then).

Now as I've said before, there are lots of very valid arguments to be made against Iraq or at least certain aspects of it, but I never get to make those arguments because I'm always pitted against people who are so mad about Bush/Iraq that mentioning either word sends them into such paroxyms of rage that their animalistic howls end all possiblity of communication let alone rational debate. Which brings me to the other point my friend made.

He feels that it's improbable that the WTC (in particular WTC7) was brought down by the planes. Of course, he is too pusillanimous to take it to its logical end and ascribe blame to someone, like Cheney or the Jews, a favorite target of other conspiracy theorists. You probably remember when I linked to the BYU professor who was making essentially the same claim, and their arguments are eeriely similar, though my friend claims to have never read the BYU professor's stuff. One argument both of them make is that airplane fuel does not burn hot enough to melt steel. Well, it doesn't have to, all it has to do is weaken it (which happens at a lot lower temperature). They argue that other buildings have had fires and haven't collapsed. Well, how many had fires proceeded by a huge impact, and involving thousands of gallons of fuel? I could go on but Nova did a special on the subject, which I saw part of, and they have an excellent page on the Engineer's Perspective (Dr. Thomas Eagar, professor of materials engineering and engineering systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) on the collapse in which he answers all of these points and more (like why did the towers collapse so neatly).

Despite what most people think I don't actually enjoy really contentious arguments; in fact, they generally leave me feeling kind of ookie. But this entry has helped with some of that. Hopefully I wasn't too hard on my friend. I think not mentioning him by name should count for something. In any event, thanks for reading this super-sized edition of "View from the Bushes." And I'll catch you tomorrow.

Wandering aimlessly in search of my youth
Ross

PS One thing I forgot to mention, when my friend initially described jet fuel as kerosene I immediately said it's not kerosene, an answer I immediately doubted and my friend just as immediately used to justify calling me a moron. He was right (on this point) and I was wrong, as wrong as wrong can be (on this point).