Ten Fallacies, and one more....

I'm sure there are more than ten fallacies involved in "stay the course" rhetoric, but it's nice to have most of the problems laid out in a nice easy-to-link format.

There's one more implicit fallacy, though, in the discussion: the only alternative to Bush's Iraq policy is a policy of disengagement.

In other Sideshow-supplied commentaries, good ideas for controlling our own law enforcement:

These differences illustrate four principles that should guide our use of personal information by the police. The first is oversight: In order to obtain personal information, the police should be required to show probable cause, and convince a judge to issue a warrant for the specific information needed. Second, minimization: The police should only get the specific information they need, and not any more. Nor should they be allowed to collect large blocks of information in order to go on "fishing expeditions," looking for suspicious behavior. The third is transparency: The public should know, if not immediately then eventually, what information the police are getting and how it is being used. And fourth, destruction. Any data the police obtains should be destroyed immediately after its court-authorized purpose is achieved. The police should not be able to hold on to it, just in case it might become useful at some future date.

I wonder, though, how (if) the arguments will change the first time one of the FBI/NSA/DHS programs flags someone who does turn out to be a terrorist. More fallacious reasoning awaits....