War/Iran: The Difference between “a” and “the” Can Be the Difference between No War and Nuclear War

from CommonDreams:

Published on Wednesday, January 17, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
Preparing Us for War with Iran
The Difference between “a” and “the” Can Be the Difference between No War and Nuclear War
by Floyd Rudmin

For the past decade or two, US journalism has become deficient, dysfunctional, defunct when reporting on international events. For finding out what is going on in the world, it is best to read Hong Kong’s Asia Times or Britain’s The Independent.

A recent article in the Independent entitled “Tensions rise as Washington accuses Iran over militias” (by Andrew Buncombe, January 14) reports the anti-Iran rhetoric of President Bush and cites a secret executive order directing US troops to attack Iranians in Iraq. This order apparently authorized two recent US attacks on Iranian diplomats, who had in fact been invited and authorized by Iraq’s elected government. In contrast, the December report of the Iraq Study Group (ISG) had in fact recommended diplomatic engagement with Iran as part of a plan to pacify Iraq and save America from defeat. But Bush has rejected that advice and would rather attack Iranians than talk to Iranians.

The article in the Independent also reported deployment of two US aircraft carrier fleets to the Persian Gulf and deployment of Patriot Anti-Missile batteries to the region, presumably to defend against Iranian missiles should US actions provoke a wider war. the British newspaper, the Times, last week reported that Israel plans nuclear strike on Iran. Recalling Vice-President Cheney’s threat on 21 January 2005 that Israel could attack Iran if the USA does not, and recalling the report in the New Yorker on 14August 2006 that Israel’s war on Lebanon was planned and provoked as part of preparations for war on Iran, then it looks like the USA and Israel are in the final stages of preparation for a wider regional war. This new war will definitely not serve US national interests considering the dire consequences for US military personnel in the region and considering the catastrophic consequences for the US economy.

Nevertheless, Israel and the USA may even use their nuclear weapons to destroy the nuclear weapons program in Iran. Iran consistently says it has no nuclear weapons program, and IAEA inspectors have found “no evidence of a nuclear weapons program”.

As part of preparation for war with Iran, US politicians and public must be made to see the threat that Iran poses and made to see the actual evidence of Iranian aggression, even if in fact there is no such evidence and even if in fact Iran is trying to stabilize Iraq as the Iraq Study Group concluded and as Iran itself has confirmed.

We have been through this once before. Four years ago, in 2003, in preparation for invading Iraq in the first place, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell and others succeeded in making US politicians and the US public see the threat posed by the weapons of mass destruction possessed by Saddam, including the acquisition of uranium from Niger, the chemical plants for making the poison gas and the missiles capable of delivering the weapons on a few minutes launch warning. Secretary of State Powell gave a slide show at the UN show the manufacturing facilities, the storage facilities, the transport systems and all of the evidence for the weapons of mass destruction possessed by Saddam. ....(more)

The rest of the article is at: http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0117-22.htm

"American psychologist, Elizabeth Loftus, and her colleagues have shown how rhetorical tricks can make people misconceive reality. In one study by Loftus and Zanni (1975), people were shown a film of a car accident, and then asked questions about what they saw. A random half of the witnesses were asked “Did you see a broken headlight?” and the other half were asked “Did you see the broken headlight?” In the first version, 7% of the people said they saw a broken headlight. In the second version, 17% said they saw the broken headlight. In fact, there was no broken headlight. If someone uses the definite article “the”, then listeners and readers tend to presume that what follows actually exist."

They occur all over the place. And they can't easily be denied, i.e., you can't just say yes or no to deny the presupposition.

It's the 'Do you still beat your wife?' problem: "Yes" --> you still beat her; "no" --> you no longer beat her, but that entails that you used to. While the question can't simply be denied, to even parse the question and understand what it's asking you have make the assumption, however briefly, that "you beat your wife" is a true assertion. The drawback is that a lot of people won't take the time to question the accuracy of the presupposition; instead they've taken it as a true assertion, and when time comes to assess whether or not 'you' are a wife-beater, there's this assertion listed as 'true'. This is different from the fact that questions (formally at least) have no truth value.

Political discourse is rife with embedded propositions, and many poor attempts at "critical thinking" overuse them. It'd be humorous if it didn't mislead so many people.

This is another one of those things that I believe should be explicitly taught in 9th grade English.