You Only Need Conspiracy Theories When Regular Theories Don't Work (or: It Must Be True - Several Lying Terrorists Told Me So!)
This story just won't die:
One motive for any [terrorist] attacks, the message said, was the alleged desecration of the Koran at the American military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where more than 500 detainees are being held.
An exploration of why terrorist manifestos are increasingly reading like MoveOn talking points will have to wait for a different time. We just want to address one particularly annoying "proof" of widespread Koran desecration in US prisons. This argument is just so stupid:
In Israel, Egypt and Jordan, academics and intellectuals said the retraction was largely irrelevant because many people in an increasingly anti-American region thought the original article about desecration of the Koran was true. "Newsweek can recant as long as they want, but as long as people are coming out of prison and telling the same story, it will not matter," said Daoud Kuttab, a news media critic and professor in Bethlehem.
Of course they're all telling the same story! Accusing the US of desecrating the Koran is the most obvious, predictable tale to tell - and if they didn't know that they should say it going into prison (and there's reason to believe that they did) they certainly know it when they come out and are flooded with "so did the US desecrate your Koran too" questions. That multiple lying terrorists are all claiming the same lie proves nothing - it works exactly like drug dealers' tales of being framed. Of course they're all going to say the same thing - what else are they going to say? Which isn't to say that police never sprinkle crack on black kids in East LA - and it doesn't mean that US soldiers have never desecrated a Koran. But what it does mean is that consistent testimony isn't evidence of a pattern, and it certainly isn't evidence of a crime. So people have to look for other evidence, and weigh it accordingly. No one should be surprised that enemies of the United States have come forward with the most obvious accusation, it's totally predictable that the usual paranoid conspiracy nuts are screaming that so many terrorists can't all have come up with the same lie.
Why is it that all lunatics have to argue the same way...
Within the UFO community are a number of self-styled "experts" who have arrogated for themselves the right to speak and lecture on behalf of alien abductees everywhere. Yet, a close study of their work reveals serious flaws in their methodology. Reports of Reptilian beings sexually assaulting human women (and on occasion human men) are not given much credence by these self-styled abduction experts. Nor are reports of the kidnapping, debriefing, training and the utilization of alien abductees in covert operations by the United States Military taken seriously by the "Big Name-Big Shot" researchers. Abductee testimony describing these kinds of events are consistently and persistently ignored by the well-known researchers, most of whom I might add, aren't even abductees themselves.
... we have a guess: it's because their delusions don't stand up to actual inspection, so they have to settle for the only evidentiary standards that make their conspiracy theories work.
One motive for any [terrorist] attacks, the message said, was the alleged desecration of the Koran at the American military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where more than 500 detainees are being held.
An exploration of why terrorist manifestos are increasingly reading like MoveOn talking points will have to wait for a different time. We just want to address one particularly annoying "proof" of widespread Koran desecration in US prisons. This argument is just so stupid:
In Israel, Egypt and Jordan, academics and intellectuals said the retraction was largely irrelevant because many people in an increasingly anti-American region thought the original article about desecration of the Koran was true. "Newsweek can recant as long as they want, but as long as people are coming out of prison and telling the same story, it will not matter," said Daoud Kuttab, a news media critic and professor in Bethlehem.
Of course they're all telling the same story! Accusing the US of desecrating the Koran is the most obvious, predictable tale to tell - and if they didn't know that they should say it going into prison (and there's reason to believe that they did) they certainly know it when they come out and are flooded with "so did the US desecrate your Koran too" questions. That multiple lying terrorists are all claiming the same lie proves nothing - it works exactly like drug dealers' tales of being framed. Of course they're all going to say the same thing - what else are they going to say? Which isn't to say that police never sprinkle crack on black kids in East LA - and it doesn't mean that US soldiers have never desecrated a Koran. But what it does mean is that consistent testimony isn't evidence of a pattern, and it certainly isn't evidence of a crime. So people have to look for other evidence, and weigh it accordingly. No one should be surprised that enemies of the United States have come forward with the most obvious accusation, it's totally predictable that the usual paranoid conspiracy nuts are screaming that so many terrorists can't all have come up with the same lie.
Why is it that all lunatics have to argue the same way...
Within the UFO community are a number of self-styled "experts" who have arrogated for themselves the right to speak and lecture on behalf of alien abductees everywhere. Yet, a close study of their work reveals serious flaws in their methodology. Reports of Reptilian beings sexually assaulting human women (and on occasion human men) are not given much credence by these self-styled abduction experts. Nor are reports of the kidnapping, debriefing, training and the utilization of alien abductees in covert operations by the United States Military taken seriously by the "Big Name-Big Shot" researchers. Abductee testimony describing these kinds of events are consistently and persistently ignored by the well-known researchers, most of whom I might add, aren't even abductees themselves.
... we have a guess: it's because their delusions don't stand up to actual inspection, so they have to settle for the only evidentiary standards that make their conspiracy theories work.
