Powellesque Warmongery

Powellesque Warmongery is by definition a (live) publication of unverifiable pieces of alleged evidence illustrating a possible (military) threat, designed to make the audience vote for aggression (war) but against any logic, counter-evidence and common sense; the presented Powellesque Evidence consists mainly of rumors, graphic files and videos showing alleged intelligence entirely undetermined and partly reproducible by any photoshop freshman; no way of telling facts from fake but fulfilling the Cheney Doctrine for entering into war; often Powellesque Evidence is manufactured by people other than the Powell (the one who presents the material, unchecked by himself); named after Colin Powell's (in-)famous speech before the U.N. General Assembly, February 5th, 2003.

Typical Powellesque Evidence for the existence of aliens

Usage:

"Did you hear the news "Iran 'digging mass graves for US troops' in case of invasion"?"

"Where did you get that Powellesque Warmongery from?"

"It's reported by FARS!"

"Do you have some link to the original source?"

"No"

"Any other evidence?"

"It was a revelation by former commander of the elite Revolutionary Guard General Hossein Kan'ani Moghadam."

"Who's that?"

"I don't know."

"What a Powell you are!"

"Jesus died and resurrected."
"Gosh! How did that happen?"
"It's written in the Bible"
"C'mon, Powellesque Evidence!"

Recent examples from a decade of Israel-Iran warmongery: It's Getting Powellesque Again

Cheap As War Propaganda Might Be

When FBI Director Robert Mueller mentioned that the alleged plotting to murder Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States "reads like the pages of a Hollywood script", he was right. It does. We remember all the dumb Hollywood fabrications illustrating "the Arabs" as devious Bedouin bandits, nervous pistols waiving around gangsters and weapon dealers, secret sleeper cells in the cosy American-Dream neighborhood and sinister sheikhs sponsoring blood-thirsty unshaved fanatic dark-skinned Muslim terrorists (see examples in the below video). Iranians are not Arabs? So what!

This time, the ludicrous Hollywood script brings us additional features like the ominous Quds Force trying to export Iran's Islamic revolution to American soil, collaborating with the most powerful Mexican drug cartel "Los Zetas" by drowning the last remaining - peace spreading - superpower of the world into a sea of opium smuggled from the Middle-East through Mexico. C'mon - you can't be serious!

War propaganda was never so cheap since Colin Powell's lying before the UN General Assembly and Dick Cheney's fabulous 1% rule.

Any evidence presented to the public? No. What for? Any reasonable motive to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in the US? Ah, yes, the Islamic Revolution. Well, c'mon! A more realistic view of the Mullah regime in Iran would be that of Corporate Iran (much like the US). The Mullahs are more rich business men than anything else.

The reason why Mueller described this tale as "reads like the pages of a Hollywood script" was probably because he felt embarrassed by being forced from higher level officials to announce such 1%-nonsense against any rationality.

On the other side - how ridiculous this recent war propaganda may sound to thinking people - the threat of another US-war in the Middle-East region may be real, this time with Israelis participating or - as some bloggers suggest - under their direction. Why? Because of "the uncertainties and dangers of the Arab Spring" for Israel. (Remember Chomsky: "The U.S. and its allies will do anything they can to prevent authentic democracy in the Arab world.")

Die Cheney Doktrin / The Cheney Doctrine

Ende November 2001 erklärte der Vizepräsident der Bush-Regierung Richard "Dick" Cheney, daß, wenn es nur eine 1%ige Chance für Massenvernichtungswaffen im Besitz der Al-Khaida gäbe, "müssen wir es als sicher annehmen und darauf antworten"*

Richard "Dick" Cheney

Eine weitere Begründung für diese Anwendung dieser bisher unbekannten statistisch-wahrscheinlichkeitstheoretischen Regel (Handle, wenn die Wahrscheinlichkeit mindestens 1% beträgt) ist Cheney bis heute schuldig geblieben, wie ja auch die Nachweise für die Existenz von Massen-vernichtungswaffen im Irak. Die Suche nach diesen und deren Zerstörung war bekanntlich eines der offiziellen Hauptmotive für die U.S.-Invasion 2003 und - Cheney's Logik folgend - konzentrierte sich die U.S.-Kriegs-propaganda immer ausschließlicher auf diesen Punkt, je näher der Kriegsbeginn rückte (und noch einige Zeit danach).

Man muß keinerlei mathematisches Talent besitzen um herauszufinden, wie absurd Cheney's Gedanke ist (wenigstens unter der genannten Interpretation). Wer trotzdem wissen möchte, wie ein Mathematiker darüber denkt, hier ein paar Beispiele aus den verschiedensten Anwendungsbereichen von John Allen Paulos:

1) Ein junger Mann in einer Bar wird von einem anderen angestarrt. Wenn der junge Cheneyaner sich bedroht fühlt und glaubt die Wahrscheinlichkeit von dem anderen Mann erschossen zu werden sei mindestens 1%, dann hat er das Recht ihn preemptiv (präventiv) zu erschießen.

2) Eine ältere Frau besucht ihren Arzt (Cheneyaner), der feststellt, daß seine Patientin seit Monaten an Halschmerzen und Müdigkeit leidet. Er verschreibt ihr eine Chemotherapie, da die Wahrscheinlichkeit für Krebs seiner Meinung nach mindestens 1% beträgt. Weitere Tests, so könnte er argumentieren, beanspruchten zuviel Zeit.

3) Ein Cheneyanischer Spieler wäre der Traum jedes Casinos. Die Wahrscheinlichkeit mit zwei Würfeln eine Augensumme von 12 zu werfen, ist 1/36, also fast 3%. Also sollte der Spieler nach Cheney's Regel ruhig sein Haus auf eine 12 setzen.

4) Was täte ein Cheneyanischer Wissenschaftler, so unvollstellbar er auch sein mag? Wenn für diesen Wissenschaftler die "Evidenz" für irgendeine abstruse Theorie mindestens 1% ergäbe, dann würde er sie als vernünftige Alternative für die etablierte Theorie verlautbaren.

Überflüssig zu erwähnen, daß der Staat tausende neue Gefängnisse bauen müßte, wenn die Gerichte aufgrund einer Evidenz von 1% entscheiden würden.

Aber, jetzt einmal abgesehen von den wahren Kriegsgründen, welche die USA zur Invasion und zerstörerischen Besetzung des Iraks führten, könnte Cheney mit seiner Doktrin nicht vielleicht doch irgendetwas Intelligentes im Kopf gehabt haben ... etwa so eine Art statistischer Version des Vorsorgeprinzips?

*vgl. Bierling "Geschichte des Irakkriegs", S. 33-34. Bierling zitiert aus Suskind, Ron: The One Percent Doctrine. Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11. New York, 2006.

By the end of November 2001, the Vice-President of the Bush-Government Richard "Dick" Cheney explained that if there would be only a 1% chance of Al-Khaida posessing weapons of mass destruction, "we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response".**

Further justification for this application of this so far unknown statistical/probabilistic principle ("Act, if the probability is at least 1%") was not given by Cheney until this day, as was not found the evidence for the existence of WMD in Iraq. The search for WMD and their removal was, as we all know, one of the main themes for the U.S. invasion 2003 and following Cheney's logic the U.S. war propaganda machinery played this tune almost exclusively as we approached the war declaration.

One needs not to be a math wunderkind to find out how absurd Cheney's thought is (at least under the mentioned interpretation). But if you are curious what a professional mathematician thinks about it, here you are some examples concerning various areas of application given by John Allen Paulos:

John Allen Paulos

1) A young man is in a bar and another man gives him a hard stare. If the young Cheneyite feels threatened and believes the probability to be at least 1 percent that the other man will shoot him, then he has a right to preemptively shoot him in "self-defense."

2) Or an older woman visits her Cheneyite doctor who, finding that the woman has suffered from a sore throat and fatigue for months, orders that she be put on chemotherapy since the likelihood of cancer is in his opinion at least 1 percent. Further tests, he might argue, would take too long.

3) A Cheneyite gambler would be a casino's dream. The chance of rolling a 12 with a pair of dice, for example, is 1/36, almost 3 percent, and hence would justify the gambler betting his house on rolling a 12.

4) And what about a Cheneyite scientist, hard as that may be to conceive? If this scientist decided that the "evidence" for some crackpot scientific theory suggested to him that its probability were at least 1 percent, the scientist would feel comfortable touting it as a reasonable alternative to established theory.

Needless to mention that the state would have to build thousands of new prisons if in the courtrooms there would be decisions made on the basis of a 1% chance.

But, despite the fact that there is no exact consent about the real intentions which led the U.S. to the invasion and destructive occupation of Iraq, couldn't Cheney have something intelligent in his mind when he formulated his doctrine ... maybe some kind of statistical version of the Precautionary Principle?

**page 123 of Suskind, Ron: The One Percent Doctrine. Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11. New York, 2006.