World War III

Bush's latest speech is a doozy. He warns that the US cannot allow Iran to gain the knowledge of how to make a nuclear weapon. That until they can prove that they are not making a weapon, the US must increase the pressure.

This is exactly the same kind of false statements he made in order to justify a war on Iraq. And just like in Iraq, the UN and other countries are arguing that they have already proved him wrong. That Iraq did not have a nuclear weapons program and that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program.

But Bush doesn't believe that proof in the form of evidence and facts is good enough. What he wants is for Iran to prove a negative. Something that cannot by definition be proved. The same demands could be made to anyone. I could ask Bush to prove that he doesn't have a nuclear weapon stashed in a self storage facility in a major city, set to go off when he makes a cell phone call. Bush could not prove that he doesn't. By Bush's own logic we should take action because he cannot prove that he doesn't have such a weapon at the ready. What do you do when someone can't prove that they don't have a doomsday weapon? Can you prove that you don't have one, or that your neighbor doesn't have one? Of course not. If you can't prove you do have one, then obviously you are hiding the evidence.

The UN and Russia both say that they have inspected Iran's nuclear program and have stated unequivocally that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program.

Saddam opened up all of his facilities for inspection and proved well enough the the UN that he did not have a program for the production of Weapons of Mass Destruction. But no amount of proof can disprove a negative. And so it is impossible to for anyone to meet Bush's burden of proof required to prevent war.

Since Bush is asking that the unprovable be proved, and this can't be done, then he will lead us into war. Until the fundamentally laws of the universe change, then Bush can dare anyone to prove that they aren't a three headed lizard from Beeblebrox, with technology that makes them appear completely indistinguishable from humans, and take action if they can't prove it.

Here's the Wikipedia Entry on this..

Negative proof

This article is about a logical fallacy. The term "negative proof" can also refer to a proof of impossibility.

The fallacy of appealing to lack of proof of the negative is a logical fallacy of the following form:

"X is true because there is no proof that X is false."

It is asserted that a proposition is true, only because it has not been proven false. The negative proof fallacy often occurs in the debate of the existence of supernatural phenomena, in the following form:

* "A supernatural force must exist, because there is no proof that it does not exist".

However, the fallacy can also occur when the predicate of a subject is denied:

* "A supernatural force does not exist, because there is no proof that it does exist.".

Appropriate occasions

In some cases a reversed burden of proof may be appropriate. This occurs when there are two competing explanations, and neither can be confirmed by observation. For example: when an empirical relationship has been observed, but the underlying mechanism is unknown, it may be reasonable to infer from the lack of conflicting evidence that the observed relationship is most likely causal. (see Inference to the Best Explanation)

Criteria for selecting the best explanation in this case could involve Occam's razor, which states that the best explanation tends to be the one requiring the least amount of additional assumptions. Such an explanation invokes the fewest intermediate factors while maintaining its predictive power; that is, its ability to explain current data and to predict future data.[1] However, according to the scientific method, the relationship is not formally proven in this instance, and to assert that it is so until disproven is fallacious.

The law in most democracies also allows negative proofs in criminal cases; namely, a defence lawyer may argue:

X is innocent because there is no (or insufficient) proof that X is guilty

And as this entry points out, in Democratic societies we assume innocence and prove guilt. This comes from the idea that no one should be falsely convicted. So the existence of proof is needed for conviction, rather than the absence of proof. Infamous events such as witch trials helped lead to this way of thinking. Just as Bush is asking Iran to prove that they aren't thinking about nuclear weapons, people were once required to prove that they weren't witches. Then they were tortured until they confessed. If they didn't confess to being witches, then they were convected and executed. The verdict was almost always the same, everyone accused, was a witch.

Likewise, Bush is on his own witch hunt. He asked Saddam to prove that he wasn't a witch. Now he's asking Iran to prove that it isn't populated by witches. If they deny their weapons program and open themselves up to even US inspections, they still won't be able to prove that they don't have a secret program. Of course if they say they do, they are guilty also. So no matter what, they are guilty. Bush wins no matter if they have a program or not.

In previous cases we have Iraq and North Korea. North Korea saw that not having a nuclear weapon would get you attacked. So they got one. Then Bush caved on sanctions and is doing what he said he would never ever do. He is bribing North Korea, just like Bill Clinton did. Bush was defeated, because North Korea snubbed him and developed a nuclear weapon and bragged about it.

Iran doesn't seem to have this option. Their nuclear program is not far enough along. And unless they can accomplish what they aren't trying to do, then they will be invaded.

I doubt that Bush believes that the course is taking will avoid WWIII. Everything his done so far, seems calculated to provide the opposite effect of his stated goals. With Turkey poised to grab the Kurdish oil fields in Iraq and Bush preparing to bomb Iran, it looks like Bush is trying to start WWIII. And all the way up to the fateful day when he gives an escalation that the next president will be unable to back down from, he'll tell us that he is making peace through endless war.

Here's a bit of video from his speech.


Col. Sam Gardiner says we are already doing special ops in Iran.


From February 2007, we can strike Iran within 24 hours of Bush giving the order. Seymour Hersch discusses war plans.


More Seymour Hersh, on Negroponte. He says that Negroponte was too moral to get along with Cheney! Negroponte's claim to fame is his work to train and direct death squads in Chile!


From January 2007


Joe Scarborough Reports. Wayne White tells us that an attack on Iran will not include ground troops. I can believe this. We don't have the troops for a ground assault. This will be a bold experiment. We seem to be counting on the fact that we don't think that Iran will fight back. If they do fight back. It seems we won't be ready. This is a perfect set up for the draft.


And finally, an Iranian photo tour