Iraq Deception Denial on the Right

Conservatives are going to have to face the facts about the marketing of the Iraq war one of these days, I think. But if this at Instapundit is any indication, the time has not yet come.

No time now to go through the Pohoretz piece in detail, but I will draw your attention to these two sentences that Insty quotes approvingly:

"Among the many distortions, misrepresentations, and outright falsifications that have emerged from the debate over Iraq, one in particular stands out above all others. This is the charge that George W. Bush misled us into an immoral and/or unnecessary war in Iraq by telling a series of lies that have now been definitively exposed."

To review:

1. The one lie about Iraq that stands out above all others is not any of the lies told by the administration, but, rather (and roughly) the "lies" to the effect that the administration lied.

2. This lie merits this special status because there is not a deductively valid proof from indubitable premisses that conclusively proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that any of the obvious falsehoods the administration told us were known conclusively by George W. Bush himself to be false beyond any shadow of a doubt.

(note: slight intentional exaggeration above in order to make point.)

Jesus. This may be the single best example of grasping at straws I've every encountered. It is, of course, saddness-inducing because it reveals, yet again, the intellectual depths to which people will sink when defending a cherished belief.

On the other hand, it reveals how desperate the (small remaining) pro-Bush crowd has become. If that's all they've got--that we can't conclusively prove that he said something that he knew conclusively to be false--then I've got a brain in a vat to sell them.

This is one of the most common errors in reasoning, especially in politics: employing unreasonable and/or differential standards of proof. In this case, Podhoretz basically reveals that he holds Bush and his critics up to different standards. On the one hand, we are to conclude that Bush's claims are not to be considered lies unless he said something he knew conclusively to be false. On the other hand, Bush's critics are considered liars if there is any doubt, no matter how slight, that their conclusions are false.

Allow me to set such radically divergent standards of proof and I can "win" practically any debate.

[The right standard to use in each case seems rather obviously to be the preponderance of evidence standard, incidentally.]