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POWELL STATEMENT TO UN SECURITY COUNCIL ABOUT WMDs. "My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence. [T]here is no doubt in my mind..." http://lnkd.in/dm_jVXw View in LinkedIn

COLIN POWELL ON WMD IN IRAQ."That's because there's no question that Powell was consciously lying: he fabricated "evidence" and ignored repeated warnings that what he was saying was false." http://lnkd.in/dm_jVXw View in LinkedIn

WMD HOAX OR ERROR? "The United States effectively terminated the search effort for unconventional weaponry in January 2005, and the Iraq Intelligence Commission concluded that the judgements of the U.S. intelligence community about the continued existence of weapons of mass destruction and an associated military program were wrong." http://lnkd.in/dKUy7s8 View in LinkedIn

MISSING EVIDENCE. "The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence ... Simply because you do not have evidence that something exists does not mean that you have evidence that it doesn't exist. And yet almost always, when we make our threat assessments ... we end up basing it on the first two pieces of that puzzle, rather than all three."(Donald Rumsfeld). http://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld View in LinkedIn

RUMSFELD CONTINUES. "So when we do the best we can and we pull all this information together, and we then say well that's basically what we see as the situation, that is really only the known knowns and the known unknowns. And each year, we discover a few more of those unknown." unknowns." http://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld View in LinkedIn

RUMSFELD'S MUSINGS about evidence for WMD in the Iraq war. "The message is that there are no "knowns." There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know." (Black Swans). http://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld View in LinkedIn

THE IRAQ WAR is a vivid recent example of a Black Swan possibility (catastrophic event) and the extreme use of (manufactured) "precaution" to go after supposed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), knowing that not all the facts were in hand. It is also an example of extreme "spin" used to support an unsubstantiated position. I give it as a contextual example of where our culture is today. " "11-11 View in LinkedIn

NO ABSOLUTE PROOF. "Better use of the precautionary principle, the acceptance of sufficient but not absolute proof, is another way to accelerate decision making ... Doubt Is Their Product is a powerful argument for the need to reinforce our ethical responsibilities to protect human and environmental health even when it requires regulation and increased costs." http://lnkd.in/d9een2b View in LinkedIn

"STEVEN J MILLOY is a commentator for Fox News and runs the Web site junkscience.com ... he believes to be false claims regarding DDT, global warming, Alar, breast implants, secondhand smoke, ozone depletion, and mad cow disease. Milloy's close financial and organizational ties to tobacco and oil companies have been the subject of criticism." http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Milloy View in LinkedIn

TRUST US. "The concept of junk science has come to be invoked in attempts to dismiss scientific findings that stand in the way of short-term corporate profits. In their book Trust Us, We're Experts (2001), they write that industries (launched campaigns) to position certain theories as junk science in the popular mind, often failing to employ the scientific method themselves." http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_science View in LinkedIn