911: Window of Exposure

[William Seger]

70. Once more round the Truther Merry-Go-Round

Again and again, you would like to pretend that arguing over details will save your faulty argument. If you understood why it's faulty, you'd see why it can't be salvaged like that. As explained in the Wiki article I referred you to, "If A, then B; B, therefore A" is not a valid inference even if you could convincingly demonstrate that B is true, which you certainly haven't. The reason it's fallacious is that you haven't established that A is both necessary and sufficient for B to be true, i.e. you haven't established that "If and only if A, then B." If B can be true even if A is false, as is clearly the case for your argument, the condition for valid logic is not met.

So, in each post, I will remind you that your logic is inherently fallacious and that you have made no attempt to fix it. It seems you just want to keep reasserting your premises, which you can't prove because they involve speculations about motives, and insist that they should be taken seriously unless someone can disprove them to YOUR satisfaction. There's a name for that logical fallacy, too: argumentum ad ignorantiam (meaning argument from ignorance, or in this case a lack of contrary evidence). That is a well-known tactic for attempting to shift the burden of proof, so I'll also keep reminding you that you are required to prove your premises -- nobody is required to disprove them.

So, discussing the silliness of your premises does not in any way let you off the hook to either fix or retract your faulty argument, but nonetheless, let's discuss the silliness of your premises:

> In The Name of God, please think of what you're saying. You are once again suggesting that communication would be established AFTER the need would arise to engage an aggressive plane. WHY would the risk for death be so sharply increased in such an otherwise meaningless manner?

Say what? Are you suggesting that communication would be established BEFORE "the need would arise"? Or what? And as nearly as I can parse that last sentence, you seem to have the cart before the horse again, begging the question. But no, what I'm "suggesting" is exactly what I said: You have not demonstrated that anything Rumsfeld did that morning actually had any effect whatsoever on Bush's ability to contact him to pass down orders. And since Bush apparently didn't make any such attempt until after UA93 had crashed, it should be clear to a rational person that you never will be able to demonstrate that, either. Your response doesn't address either of those points. But here's the real absurdity: You talk about him making "a few calls" and going ahead with a scheduled intelligence briefing as if that were suspicious behavior, conveniently overlooking the fact that Rumsfeld was in his office for those. He was in his office -- the first place Bush would have tried to reach him -- from before the second WTC hit until after the Pentagon hit. So what you're claiming really amounts to saying that it's so incredibly suspicious that Rumsfeld was in his office that the only possible explanation for such suspicious behavior is that he was deliberately trying to maximize the number of murders? It's an amazing argument, but not for good reasons.

> Absolutely wrong. Learn the facts. Examine the statement made to the 911 Commission, by the commanding general of the NMCC, that said: "For half an hour, we could not locate him".

Learn the facts, huh? The fact is, the 9/11 Commission said it was not able to determine if Rumsfeld had a pager or cell phone with him when he left his office to go to the crash site. You'd like to believe he didn't but you can't prove it, yet you claim it as a "fact"? Don't try to pull that and then tell me to "learn the facts." I don't know if he did or didn't, but I do know the issue is moot since Bush didn't try to contact him. And even if Bush had tried to contact him then, during that 20-minute or so window between the Pentagon hit and UA93 crashing, it was way too late for any orders through Rumsfeld to have any effect.

> The scope of possibility is exactly what it is. Logic will lead any person to the same conclusion.

Really? I've explained a couple of times now what I mean by a "valid logical inference." Maybe you should take a crack at sharing your definition, since we definitely don't seem to be talking about the same thing.