"Progress is just starting to be made."

[ck4829]

So say the ads that were part of a PR blitz that is being made to support escalation (AKA the "surge") in Iraq.

So, I'm wondering...

All those people who said progress was being made in Iraq since 2003, were they lying when they said that?

And how many of those same people now say the surge means that "progress is just starting to be made" in Iraq now?

[redqueen]

1. The use of the passive voice in that sentence

makes me want to... I don't know... say something snarky about grammar.

Argh!

[The_Casual_Observer]

2. Wait long enough & you're bound to hear it again someday.

[kenny blankenship]

3. Sounds a lot like: having a desire or intent to have a program for weapons of mass destruction

The thing itself isn't there, it turns out...

In fact the processes, materials, and physical plant needed to produce the thing don't even exist, as we discover upon full inspection...

But we know (or assert) that there was a plan and a desire to have the WMDs...which for legal purposes of justifying our "preemptive" mass murder, we take to be exactly equal to actually having the proscribed thing itself.

(Of course it would be impossible for anyone --referee, bystanders or even the accused-- to prove the non-existence of an alleged desire. It is impossible to dispute any accusation when "virtual" reality, meaning the reality of future potentiality, in the form of supposed unseen plans, unwritten desires, unrealized intentions, is held to be just as good evidence as measurable reality, or present actuality)

The proscribed weapons absolutely were there, they were just present virtually. They were present by virtue of the desire of Saddam Hussein (asserted by our leaders) to possess them in the future. Prove, if you dissent from the decision to invade, that he didn't have any such forbidden desire! The invasion is therefore justified.

Prove that there is no possibility that progress is just about to start beginning in Iraq. PROVE IT! Without having data from the future you cannot prove that. Therefore, it is justified to claim that progress is being made in Iraq: for even if it is not apparent now, it could be just beginning to start to be made, and you cannot prove that it isn't. As long as we all agree that potentiality is just as good as actuality, then such claims hold up.

When the plain meaning of words is dissolved to this degree, deliberative democracy goes extinct. Guns and money are the only principles of government.

[rucky]

4. I'll change, baby. Just give me one more chance! n/t

[goodhue]

5. They were lying then, and they are lying now

"Generals Lie, Soldiers Die!"