Are all American wars sold the same way?

I blogged previously about the circular argument made by Dick Cheney to garner support for the US invasion of Iraq. In that example, Vice-President Dick Cheney leaked information to the New York Times, and then cited the Times reporting as evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Now we are seeing the current administration (particularly Secretary of State John Kerry and Senator John McCain) try to pull a similar scam. 

This time the story begins with an op-ed by Elizabeth O'Bagy published this week in the Wall Street Journal. The thrust of the op-ed was to argue that the rebel forces in Syria are not all allied with Islamic fundamentalists and that were they to gain power they would oppose those forces and support democracy in Syria. This op-ed was then quoted by Sen. McCain as part of a question directed to Sec. Kerry in an attempt to alleviate concerns that bombing the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad would inadvertently assist Al Qaeda:

Secretary Kerry then later endorsed that op-ed and recommended it to other members of Congress to help them make a decision about whether or not to support attacks on Syria.

What the Wall Street Journal, O'Bagy, Kerry, and McCain all neglected to mention (that is until some actual reporting from folks at The Daily Caller and the Huffington Post) was that O'Bagy is actually paid by the US Government to advocate on behalf of the Syrian rebels. As a result of this reporting, the Wall Street Journal has since added the following to the original op-ed by O'Bagy:

In addition to her role at the Institute for the Study of War, Ms. O'Bagy is affiliated with the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a nonprofit operating as a 501(c)(3) pending IRS approval that subcontracts with the U.S. and British governments to provide aid to the Syrian opposition.

To summarize, O'Bagy is paid by the US Government to provide aid to Syrian rebels. She then writes an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal advocating for increased aid to the Syrian rebels. Agents of the US Government then cite her op-ed as part of their argument for increasing aid to the Syrian rebels (in this case by damaging the military capabilities of the Syrian government)! This is an excellent example of a Circular Argument in that the government is basically paying someone to advocate for policies. This advocacy is then cited as independent evidence of the wisdom of pursuing those policies. Once again everything moves in a giant circle, and those of us who paid attention during the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq are struck with the most disturbing sense of deja vu as we see the same tricks and lies used to sell that war trotted out just a decade later to try and sell America on another war.

UPDATE: It turns out that O'Bagy is also a liar. She doesn't have a PhD and has been fired from the Institute for the Study of War.

UPDATE II: Despite the lies and misinformation that she has spewed, Elizabeth O'Bagy (like many conservative commentators) keeps falling upwards. Though she was unsuccessful in getting the US to attack Syria, John McCain has recognized her valiant efforts on his behalf and has gone ahead and hired her as a legislative assistant. Apparently in conservative circles no bad deed goes unrewarded.

Round and Round It Goes. Where It Stops, Nobody Knows.

Apropos of the stunning, but ultimately not very surprising, revelations of the scope of government spying on innocent citizens, I present this Tom Tomorrow cartoon from over a year ago, which nicely summarizes and anticipates many of the responses we have heard and can continue to expect to hear from President Obama and various other security state apologists:

As illustrated, this is a nice example of a Circular Argument. That is, an argument in which the conclusion is stated or assumed in one of the premises. This particular argument is one that really bothers me as I don't understand how someone can defend something they don't know anything about. Those who defend Obama's expansion of the security state are really like ostriches with their heads buried in the sand (I know ostriches don't really do this, but it is too good a metaphor to let factual considerations get in the way). If one doesn't know what is happening, then one can't defend it.

Furthermore, the appeal to terrorism (a sub-category of the Appeal to Emotion) begins to make less and less sense when one realizes that, from the perspective of the US government, every single man, woman, and child in the US is a potential terrorist. If the state really is genuinely afraid of every one of its citizens, then we need to seriously rethink what we mean by democracy and what we mean when we call ourselves one.

h/t to Digby

UPDATE: I just realized that I blogged about this topic over a year ago. That post can be found here.

Circular Arguments can lead us to war

The Daily Show with John Stewart provides a very nice example of a circular argument from the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq in 2002. Stewart does a very nice job of explaining the circularity. I have had difficulties with embeds, so here is a link for it: 

Daily Show: A Leak of Their Own

The circularity of course comes from former Vice-President Dick Cheney citing as evidence for his claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction his own claim that he leaked to the New York Times. We can paraphrase the argument as follows: Iraq has WMD because the New York Times said so, and the New York Times said so because that is what I told them.

I can't tell you if I am violating your privacy. That would be a violation of your privacy.

A Circular Argument (often called Begging the Question) is a fallacy in which one states or assumes the conclusion in one of the premises. The name is fairly descriptive in that one is arguing in a circle in which the conclusion is true because it is supported by the premise, but the premise in turn depends on the conclusion in order for it to be true. As Bradley Dowden puts it, "Circular reasoning occurs when the reasoner begins with what he or she is trying to end up with."

I was reminded of this fallacy when I cam across this article by David Sirota. In it, he links to this report from Wired's Spencer Ackerman discussing the National Security Agency's (NSA) response to a request for information on Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) wiretaps from two US Senators on the Intelligence Oversight Committee. FISA was a law originally passed in 1978 which set up procedures for the surveillance of communications between "foreign powers" and their agents in the US. This law was then amended in 2008 in the wake of a NYT report on how the government had enlisted major telecom firms to (seemingly illegally) aid the government in its surveillance efforts. Under this amended form, in addition to retroactively immunizing telecoms for their illegal activities, the government further relaxed the standards for allowing surveillance of US citizens. Since the law is up for renewal later this year, the aforementioned Senators, Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and Mark Udall (D-Colorado) sent a request (PDF) to the NSA asking for, among other things, a rough estimate of how many Americans had been spied on. It is the response (PDF) to this request, authored by I. Charles McCullough III, Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, that I want to focus on.

In this letter, McCullough argues that he can't satisfy Wyden and Udall's request because, "an IG review of the sort suggested would itself violate the privacy of U.S. persons." Ignoring for now the obvious non sequitur (Wyden and Udall were only looking for a number, not the names of those surveilled), we see a very nice example of circular reasoning. In effect, McCullough is arguing the following: We can't give you information about the impact of this law on the privacy of US Citizens because that would violate the privacy of US Citizens; we can't allow you to evaluate whether this law violates privacy because that would be a violation of privacy.

If I can editorialize for a moment (which I can because this is my blog), I am not sure Kafka or Heller could come up with a more absurd demonstration of bureaucratic obfuscation.