Is there a term for the speech device used during the Bush speech?

[dhinojosa]

I don't know if there is a name for this, but there should be a name for this and one that represents the pure evilness of this speech device. Let me use a non-political example.

"How is your wife today? Did you know a bitch is a female dog?"

Wow, how evil is that? I never called your wife a bitch if we get down to brass tacks. But out of contempt I intentionally put those words together to imply it. I would get punched by saying this to a husband wouldn't I? So why is it right for the American people to let Bush get away with this ploy? Here is a political example:

"We must attack the terrorist in Iraq to guarantee the safety of Americans here at home. These are the lessons we learned on 9/11"

Hmm. I made that last one up. But see how easy it is to link 9/11 to Iraq eventhough in a legal way I never did such a thing? Wow, I am one evil S.O.B, time to join the G.O.P!!

I must give credit to the latest speech writers by doing this in a way that is truly deceitful, even some of these are testing the waters of actually trying to make a connection.

Here is one where these two sentences don't even belong together:

The troops here and across the world are fighting a global war on terror. The war reached our shores on September 11, 2001.

Here is a prime example of that divisive device here:

They are trying to shake our will in Iraq, just as they tried to shake our will on September 11, 2001. They will fail.

This one the writers really do make the connection, but this time separate paragraphs and a long pause when read:

After September the 11th, I made a commitment to the American people: This nation will not wait to be attacked again. We will defend our freedom. We will take the fight to the enemy.

Iraq is the latest battlefield in this war.

You can't make a speech with having those words together to link the two.

So what do you think? Is there such a word to define what Bush is doing? Is there already one? Do you have a good name if there isn't a word to describe this already?

[BlueEyedSon]

1. Manipulation. Propaganda. Lies.

[Karenina]

65. The graphic...

[gratuitous]

2. Stupidhead himself calls it

Catapulting the propaganda.

[atommom]

3. There probably is a word for it. And if not, there should be.

Doublespeak?

[Justpat]

4. Repetition

helps catapult the proganda really well.

[mzteris]

5. Did you hear......

****After September the 11th, I made a commitment to the American people: This nation will not wait to be attacked again. We will defend our freedom. We will take the fight to the enemy.

Iraq is the latest battlefield in this war.****

On the BBC this morning, they were interviewing an Iraqi woman professor over there who interpreted this to mean, that yeah, we made sure the war was over there and not "over here". And they really resent it.

She also said they did not feel safer wtih the American troops over there because they - the soldiers - just "shoot people" without knowing the situation because they are "so afraid".

She also made the point that nothing was "getting better". It was only getting worse. She spoke to the fact that their borders are sieves and that the Americans were the ones letting the "terrorist/insurgents" in.

[dhinojosa]

8. No. wow.

Very interesting.

[madeline_con]

79. " Iraq is the latest battlefield in this war ..."

Yep, I heard that loud and clear. I didn't dare miss the speech. I recorded it to listen again.

Bush doesn't always lie, IMO. He has speech writers who prop him up to speak in their special code.

Do you remember the "wonder working power..." comment in the State of the Union Address? That was codespeak for Christian Evangelical backscratching.

Don't misunderestimate this guy. :crazy:

[ewagner]

6. Good question

I've been thinking about it also for some time now.

I took a course in Propaganda in College and to tell you the truth, I never heard a phrase to define what he is doing. I suspect that Bush*, Rove, Karen Hughes, Andy Card and the rest of the gang have invented an entirely new propaganda technique which has yet to be named.

Because you have done a great job of documenting it, I think the honor of naming it belongs to you.

[fooj]

10. What about the Bush Bullshit Brigade?

Or Bushbabble?


peace.

[swag]

7. "non sequitur" comes to mind.

[dhinojosa]

9. Duh, on my part....

I totally forgot about that. But it seems there needs to be another word to describe this a more of non-sequitur with malice. etc.

[swag]

11. No "duhs" about it.

But Bush was using the classing "and ice cream has no bones" style of argumentation.

Peace and love,

s

[dhinojosa]

15. Yeah, but maybe non-sequitur doesn't really reflect the

sheer malice of this speech.

[swag]

21. True. How about "malicious, mendacious non sequiturs?"

[dhinojosa]

30. wow, let me look up mendacious...

wow., that's a good word! :hi:

[swag]

34. Oh you're welcome. I learned "mendacious" from Jimmy Swaggart,

appropriately enough.

[ewagner]

I agree with that

this goes beyond non-sequitur....

[bear425]

37. How about mal-sequitur? n/t

[dhinojosa]

39. nice nt

[AverageJoe]

12. It's close to a false analogy, but the analogy isn't explicit

Also, close to faulty cause and effect; close to the red herring fallacy.

It's a type of dishonest guilt by association.

How about: The blatant, evil lie fallacy?

[Ready4Change]

27. Howabout

Implied Analogy? Is that close to what you're thinking?

[AverageJoe]

44. Maybe so

Yeah, I think maybe that's what I'm saying. Thanks!

[Cats Against Frist]

35. It's a little "post hoc ergo propter hoc"

which means "after this, therefore, because of this," meaning that one is arguing that something happens as a result of something else, but the causal link isn't necessarily there. But I don't know if that applies to the specific phrasing, in general. Overall, it applies to the argument -- I think.

**edited for spelling

[AverageJoe]

43. Yes, that's very close

and maybe as close as we'll get, but I'm not sure that it's an exact fit.

[ScamUSA.Com]

13. meme change

thats what I call it anyway

[AUYellowDog]

14. Equivocation

saying that two things are the same or related when they really aren't.

Brandon

[rman]

52. Implying such merely by mentioning the two in sequence.

It's not actually "saying" the two things are related, it is merely suggested - and subsequently assumed by the audience, because it is not questioned.

It is abusing the fact that people try to make sense of what people say. and it leaves a lot of room for plausible deniability.

As Paul Krugman put it:
"They are carefull to phrase the things they say so that it is literally true, just misleading."

A variation that comes down to the same thing would be:
"They are carefull to phrase the things they say so that it is not literally untrue, just meaningless."
But meaning is implied by the fact that it is said at all, in a Presidential speech, no less.

[Greybnk48]

16. "poisoning the well"

It is very close to this tactic (in logic). In addition, he's pushing false inferences, also using the "validity effect," i.e., repetition ("I've heard that before, therefore it must be true.").

An example of "poisoning the well": An employee knows his boss is anti-semitic. Someone other than the employee may get the upcoming promotion. The employee approaches his boss and says something like "I hear you're going to promote Sam. Did you know he's a Jew?" Being Jewish has nothing to do with the job, but the employee knows that emotively the remark will work.

Put it all together and I think it could be called "Sophistry," in the perjorative sense. Saying anything and twisting things just to win an argument.

Just my 2 cents.

[dhinojosa]

18. Kind of like the Bush "push polls"

talking about John McCain's daughter being black.

[Greybnk48]

20. Yes. But push polls use another tactic

sort of like the old question "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" The questions force undesireable answers.

[Julius Civitatus]

17. Translation: All brown people are the same, and are out to get us...

...therefore we need to stay the course in Iraq, to put some brown people in their place.

It doesn't matter if Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, it's about putting brown people in their place! Well, that and the multi-billion no-bid contracts awarded to Halliburton... which just happen to be the company formerly ran by VP Cheney.

[sunnystarr]

19. It's a common Propaganda technique called "Transfer"

You can read more about it here: http://www.propagandacritic.com/articles/ct.fc.transfer.html

[ewagner]

28. Thanks for the link

I think that's close, but there's something beyond "Transfer"

[pgh_dem]

36. Aion at 22 has it right imo...conflation is the word, transfer is the...

technique...

Conflation is the running together or grouping of unrelated things. But this can be used in an honest mistake, such as remembering two things that happened at different times yesterday as though they happened at the same time and place.

Transfer is the propaganda technique which dishonestly uses conflation to transfer positive or at least already settled matters onto a more subjective, or unknown, quantity.

Thus, everyone gets upset remembering 9/11...and by mentioning them sequentially with the war in Iraq, without any qualifiers, you transfer that emotional reaction onto the war in Iraq.

The tough bit about this is that it is NOW true, where it wasn't at the beginning of the war. US soldiers really are fighting self-described members of Al Qaeda, NOW, after we overthrew Hussein who had been keeping them out (as they were a threat to his power).

It's like saying you're putting a bunch of rotting food in a clean basement to fight rats, and weeks later when you find rats...you announce, "HAHA see? I told you I was fighting rats here!"

[aion]

22. Conflation is the proper term

The proper term is 'conflation', I believe. When two disperate ideas are conflated together, they're mentioned together whenever possible -- even though there is no relation.

[dhinojosa]

33. Conflation is interesting....

but it doesn't reflect deception the way Bush does it. :)

[Lexingtonian]

23. People used to use words like "associationism"

to describe it. You juxtapose words that don't have a rational, causal, relationship to each other. But they have to have emotional relationship, i.e. individual sense of social approval and social safety, to them.

It works on people who are incompetent on the terms of debate, who don't have the frame of reference or critical thinking ability needed to understand the issue.

[ewagner]

31. That pretty much describes it

thanks....

my "Propaganda Course" was in 1969....so I'm a little out of date.

[Ready4Change]

24. My naming attempt: "Textual Osmosis"

Waddya think?

[shimmergal]

25. innuendo?

In face-to-face speech, whenever someone uses an undefined "They" the way Bush did, I just ask them "Just who is this 'they' you're talking about?" Unfortunately we can't do this to Chimp.

[Julius Civitatus]

26. I've got it: it should be called "BUSHIAN ANALOGY"

Example: "Terrorists attacked us on 9/11. Saddam Hussein is an evil dictator that we need to depose."

Hey! I never said Saddam was behind 9/11, did I?

It's a cynical, manipulative extension fo the non-denial denial, so common among Republican presidents.

[CWebster]

29. This is what burns me

Everyone knows what he is up to. It is the same shit he has always pulled--yet few call him on it. Will no one hold the smirking chimp accountable?

Instead we hear the likes of Kerry lending credibility to "our mission" instead of challenging the fundamental legitimacy. How can anyone respect that?

[Auntie Bush]

32. Indirect associative propaganda technique or indirect lying.

I think our politicians should point out this technique for lying and make the people aware it is a form of lying. But it isn't something new. Bush and Co. have been doing this throughout his entire make believe role as president. A technique developed specifically to deliberately link Saddam to 911 without lying and saying, "We have to attack Saddam/Iraq because they bombed the World Trade Center."

[EFerrari]

41. Aka, psuedo logic. n/t

[jasmeel]

38. Sounds like Pavlovian conditioning to me. For example:

The term Iraq is consistently being paired with the very aversive date "September 11th 2001". This pairs the relatively non-threatening Iraq (to the US anyway) with September 11th.

This mechanism can be used to pair something with a positive or negative stimulus. In the case of Pavlov's dogs, Pavlov paired a bell with meat powder (an positive stimulus) and got dogs to salivate simply to the sound of the bell. It's a super simple strategy to mind f*** people.

So now in the case of Iraq, those who aren't thinking critically will strongly pair Iraq with 9/11 and the feelings previously brought about by 9/11 will also be brought about by Iraq.

[hnsez]

48. Once the conditioning is complete, the subject reacts subconsciously ...

without thinking. Any critical thoughts that could disassociate the two releases the strong feelings generated by the original negative stimulation (9-11). The subject then avoids thoughts that would lead to disassociation.

In the case of Bush, any attempt to break this conditioning causes the subject to project the negative feelings of 9-11 into the person attempting to break the conditioning.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

40. The Proper Linguistic Term:

"Complete and Utter Horse Shit"

[many a good man]

42. Answer here

Its a psyops technique called the "missing middle".

USAF Colonel (Ret.) Sam Gardiner mentions it in his report "Truth from These Podia: Summary of a Study of Strategic Influence, Perception Management, Strategic Information Warfare and Strategic Psychological Operations in Gulf II".

Two concepts are mentioned together implying relation or causation in peoples' minds, but never explicitly linked. Gives the propagandist plausible deniability but creates the relationship in the listener's psyche.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3839649

[BobBoudelangFan69]

45. Also Known As Donut Logic, Missing The Middle Connection.

[dhinojosa]

50. Wow. those are good reads...

How come I didn't see those before?

[TransitJohn]

46. Obfuscation

ob·fus·cate ( P ) Pronunciation Key (bf-skt, b-fskt)
tr.v. ob·fus·cat·ed, ob·fus·cat·ing, ob·fus·cates
To make so confused or opaque as to be difficult to perceive or understand: “A great effort was made... to obscure or obfuscate the truth” (Robert Conquest).
To render indistinct or dim; darken: The fog obfuscated the shore.
obfus·cation n.
ob·fusca·tory (b-fsk-tôr, -tr, b-) adj.

[gordianot]

47. The 5 basic rules of propoganda.

1. The rule of simplification: reducing all data to a simple confrontation between “Good and Bad”, “Friend and Foe”.
2. The rule of disfiguration: discrediting the opposition by crude smears and parodies.
3. The rule of transfusion: manipulating the consensus values of the target audience for one's own ends.
4. The rule of unanimity: presenting one's viewpoint as if it were the unanimous opinion of all right-thinking people: drawing the doubting individual into agreement by the appeal of star-performers, by social pressure, and by “psychological contagion”.
5. The rule of orchestration: endlessly repeating the same messages in different variations and combinations.


Bush regularly meets all 5 conditions in most of his speeches when he gets the wording as provided delivered coherently.

[Singular73]

49. Yeah, but its pretty transparent.

Even my mother, who doesn't follow politics at all said, "Nice Try" when Bush said something about the shared hateful idiology of terrorists and insurgents.

[meppie-meppie not]

51. good point and it sure was lame not to mention unconscionable.

[Donna Zen]

53. Let's name it!

I'll go first:

Cognitive association through juxtapositioning of otherwise unrelated concepts.

[Igel]

56. It's been named, from several different perspectives.

Some a couple thousand years ago.

Others, back in the 1960s.

Look up: hypotaxis and parataxis
Gricean maxims, conversational implicature
speech act theory

The first two used to be, long ago, standard high school fare.

I believe the second row should be standard high school fare.

[gulfbreeze]

54. Artful deceit. Manipulation and lies. It all boils down to the same thin

[Igel]

55. Formally, it's called parataxis: the positioning of two elements

of a sentence (or two sentences) adjacent to each other without defining the relationship.

"The tree was tall. Green. Leafy." --> tall, green, leafy tree
"Sue went to the fridge; she removed a glass of milk." --> she went
to the fridge *in order to* remove a glass of milk.

There's no need to worry about speaker intent or what the listener infers.


Another way of approaching it involves Gricean maxims: You're assumed to be cooperative when speaking. Therefore, in English at least (the maxims need tweaking for different languages/cultures), the speaker *infers* that what's said is relevant, true, as much information as necessary, and, if insufficient, all the information the person has. Anything less isn't lying, but it's not being truthful.
"How many children do you have?" "Two." --> you only have 2 kids;
if you have 5, you haven't lied, but you've abetted a wrong
inference. (Notice this can be suspended: "I need to borrow
two chairs for my kid's b-day party. Who has two chairs?" "I have
two chairs!" --> says nothing about how many chairs you have.
Others have tried to reduce this just to relevance relations.

In any event, the term for this is "conversational implicature": it's not that the logic or the word/sentence-level semantics entails or even implies what the listener infers; instead, the rules deduced for English discourse are said to "implicate" certain things. Most speakers are unaware they're using them, either as listener or speaker.
"Canoing Saturday? Test Monday." --> Can't go canoing, must study; the speaker's using relevance--in what way is a test Monday relevant to canoing on Saturday?
Defendants, politicians, and salesmen routinely violate rules for implicature; it provides deniability. Violation of implicature rules does not constitute a lie: no falsehood is stated.

A third way, sort of contingent in many respects on Grice, involves John Searl and speech act theory: there's what you say, what's understood, and what the intent is. Not my thing, I refer you to http://openebxml.sourceforge.net/methodology/SAT/sat.html.


on edit: Here's another handy term for you, too: presupposition. It's not an assertion, but something that your listener must assume to be true in order to process the sentence or question. There's no need to actually revisit the truth of the presupposition: for at least a fraction of a second, our brains believe it to be true, and may not revise that judgment. Typically, if you can't negate something with a simple yes/no, it's a presupposition (of course, the question has to be such that it has a yes/no answer: that test doesn't work with "When's dinner?")
"Do you still beat your wife?": the question is *still?*; yes --> you still do, no --> you no longer do. Presupposition: you beat your wife.
"We went to war because Saddam killed puppies.": The question is, Is that the reason we went to war? Neither yes nor no affects the presupposition: "Saddam killed puppies."
These are not assertions; strictly speaking, even if you know that the presupposition is false when you use it, you have not lied. You have not asserted that it is true, and you have not implied it. You have presupposed it.

Discourse pragmatics. Don't leave home without them.

[dhinojosa]

61. "abetted a wrong inference"

is quite the term and that is a nice description of what happened in Bush's speech.

To digress I read the link you provided, and I am surprised how ebxml has taken business to a science. I remembered reading about it in 2001 and thought, "so many processes to document!" I am pretty amazed that they are analyzing speech theory now.

[donkeyotay]

57. Great thread!

Propaganda depends upon the recipients being unaware. Ha! Those days will soon be over. We're all getting good at this, and they'll have to build a bigger catapult, cuz we can't get fooled again.

[melissinha]

58. Ok my Argumentation book is at home

And its been like 11 years since I studied this... I am working on it.. but here are a few thoughts...

In examining the three phrases you included... I can see that the premise Bush is using is that the War on Terror was being waged way before 9/11 and that he is simply responding to it... take

They are trying to shake our will in Iraq, just as they tried to shake our will on September 11, 2001.

Now just by using they twice, he is saying that the terrorists in Iraq are the same ones that attacked us on 9/11. This is blatant disregard for the "there was no connectioned between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden". I don't know about the device, but he is joining the two events by making "they" part of both.

After September the 11th, I made a commitment to the American people: This nation will not wait to be attacked again. We will defend our freedom. We will take the fight to the enemy.

Iraq is the latest battlefield in this war.

WAIT!! This is a GOOD ONE.... key phrases here are We will take the fight to the enemy. and Iraq is the latest battlefield in this war.Let me see... could it be a post hoc ergo propter hoc (Coincidental Correlation) Because Iraq now IS the enemy... one can insert the phrase "
Premise 1: We were attacked
Premise 2: We will take the fight to the enemy.
Premise 2(unstated): Iraq is responsible for the attack.
Conclusion: Iraq is the latest battlefield in this war.

Simply by not saying "Iraq is responsible for the attack"

THis is what we have been arguing all along, there was no argument for that third premise that was based in fact which leads to the conclusion.

[dhinojosa]

59. You are soooooo correct...

1. You are right, They mask all involved and those not involved with they.

2. You are right again, the omission is key to Bush speech, instead of lie in a premise, like your unstated Premise 2, they leave it out.

Great find.

[sunnystarr]

60. That takes me so back to my course in Logic ...

was anyone here good in that course? I remember the trees ... which I so hated.

[Igel]

64. The logic's more like abduction:

We have a specific instance that might be part of a more general syllogism, but also might not be. But we assume that it is:

Instead of the proper syllogism,
Men are mortal
Socrates is a man
--> Socrates is mortal,

it's more like this:

Men are mortal
Socrates is mortal
--> Socrates is a man.

Possible; but cats are mortal. The syllogism is insufficient.

We fight Islamic terrorists.
We're fighting Iraq.
Iraq is an Iraqi terrorist.
(I'd have to recast the sentences to produce parallelism and make the syllogism look like the canonical one immediately preceding, but you get the idea.)

But since nobody's presenting a formal syllogism, I'd still go with a pragmatics-based approach. Maybe Searlean.

[mccoyn]

62. My English teacher calls it an F.

When I jump from one topic to another without any connection between them, I usually get an F.

Also when I use long setances, with long pauses after every few words, and I cram new thoughts together with the word and, I get an F.

[melissinha]

68. hell yes

In both 2000 and 2004 Presidential debates I often thought about how my Persuasion/Argumentation professor would grade his arguments.... replete with fallacies and arguments with gaping holes.

I think he'd get like a D-.... Do you remember hearing that he and Kerry had the same debate professor???? How can you cheat well enough to pass that course.. you can't send in a replacement in that class.... Guess old Prescott Bush had to do a lot of wrangling to graduate this moron.

[gulliver]

63. Non sequitur and equivocation

He also begs the question. There may be no fallacy left unexercised in Bush's speech last night.

[Arcadia1]

66. Good Work!!

I liked "post hoc ergo propter hoc" ("after this, therefore, because of this,") the best. The Romans thought of everything, rhetoric-wise.

It's so dishonest on Bush's part. Well, his speechwriters, he can't put a sentence together on his own ... honest or otherwise.

[fob]

67. Linking Ideas thru Asserted Reinforcement - L.I.A.R.

[melissinha]

69. BRILLIANT

I LOVE that!!!!!

[eleny]

70. Conflate

1. To bring together; meld or fuse: “The problems include... dates moved around, lovers deleted, many characters conflated into one” (Ty Burr).
2. To combine (two variant texts, for example) into one whole.

[Dr Fate]

71. In Georgia they call it "Bull Shitting." n/t

n/t

[salvorhardin]

72. I'm not sure, but I think those are examples of enthymeme

http://www.virtualsalt.com/rhetoric.htm#Enthymeme

Enthymeme is an informally-stated syllogism which omits either one of the premises or the conclusion. The omitted part must be clearly understood by the reader. The usual form of this logical shorthand omits the major premise

[cookiebird]

73. enthymeme II

and since we are dealing with the actual rhetorical act of Bush's speech last night, an enthymeme allows the audience to actively participate in the persuasive message as it is being delivered. In other words, the audience persuades themselves that Iraq was linked to 9/11...and these ideas are intended by the speaker. Beware the rhetorically skilled!

[Mick Knox]

74. muppet strings

[NoFederales]

75. Great thread

Best one I've followed in some time.

NoFederales

[Nikki Stone 1]

76. "Willfully misleading or obfuscatory juxtaposition"

Say that 100 times and you reach meditational bliss. :)

[Fire Walk With Me]

77. Disingenuousness? The non-logic of "it follows"?

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=Disingenuousness

dis·in·gen·u·ous     P   Pronunciation Key  (dsn-jny-s)
adj.
Not straightforward or candid; insincere or calculating: “an ambitious, disingenuous, philistine, and hypocritical operator, who... exemplified... the most disagreeable traits of his time” (David Cannadine).

Pretending to be unaware or unsophisticated; faux-naïf.

Usage Problem. Unaware or uninformed; naive.

disin·genu·ous·ly adv.
disin·genu·ous·ness n.
Usage Note: The meaning of disingenuous has been shifting about lately, as if people are unsure of its proper meaning. Generally, it means “insincere” and often seems to be a synonym of cynical or calculating. Not surprisingly, the word is used often in political contexts, as in It is both insensitive and disingenuous for the White House to describe its aid package and the proposal to eliminate the federal payment as “tough love.” This use of the word is accepted by 94 percent of the Usage Panel. Most Panelists also accept the extended meaning relating to less reproachable behavior. Fully 88 percent accept disingenuous with the meaning “playfully insincere, faux-naïf,” as in the example “I don't have a clue about late Beethoven!” he said. The remark seemed disingenuous, coming from one of the world's foremost concert pianists. Sometimes disingenuous is used as a synonym for naive, as if the dis- prefix functioned as an intensive (as it does in certain words like disannul) rather than as a negative element. This usage does not find much admiration among Panelists, however. Seventy-five percent do not accept it in the phrase a disingenuous tourist who falls prey to stereotypical con artists.

[madeline_con]

78. Not sure it has a name...

but it's just like Cheney saying "Al Qaeda" and "Saddam" every chance he got.

When he was called on it, he denied ever accusing Saddam of collaborating with Al Qaeda, at least on one occassion I happened to witness.

Technically, he never did. But subliminally, look where it got us! At one point 50% of Americans believed there was a connection.

The problem is, too many people don't really listen to the carefully crafted words, they just let them drift around in their little heads until they land in a pile togehter.

[cliss]

80. I call it evil.

Bush has a cadre of very talented speechwriters. They make it their business to fine-tune lies and wordsmithing to a level never seen before in this country.

The bottom line is, if this war was necessary, he wouldn't need to do this kind of God=damned word-parsing and twisting around. Everybody would understand that our security was at stake. No obfuscation or tricky word anagrams needed. Just the truth.

Same thing with Wolfowitz and RumsFailed. They twist words around. They believe they are masters at this. And again, if this was a just cause, would they need to do this?

Answer =

[Fire Walk With Me]

81. It's a shell game. Placing unrelated things together for association.

[Hissyspit]

82. specious

spe·cious 1. Seeming to be good, sound, correct, logical, etc. without really being so; plausible but not genuine


spe·cious (spee' shus)
adj.
Having the ring of truth or plausibility but actually fallacious: a specious argument.
Deceptively attractive.

[Hissyspit]

83. Bush et al are big on false dichotomies, too.

either/or fallacy

[jmcon007]

84. behind the curve a little?

Democrats have been saying this for a very long time....that there is no connection between Hussein and 9/11. Kerry even forced Bush to clumsily admit it in one of their debates.
Even leading up to his speech last night Democrats were warning that he would try and connect the two again and, guess what? He did try it. Except now I believe the American people were prepared to the point of thinking, "Hmmm, there he goes again, trying to link the two."
It's not effctive anymore. Those days are long gone.