Josh Marshall's Logical Fallacy

Here is one of Josh Marshall's entries from March 17:

One of the things we hear again and again from the administration is that Saddam Hussein still had both the intention and the capability to build and possess weapons of mass destruction.

Isn't this a logical fallacy?

I mean, if you have the intention to build WMDs and the ability to build them, then you have WMDs. It's about as close to 2 + 2 = 4 as you get in human affairs.

Not that this is the biggest bit of ridiculousness coming out 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue these days. But it's worth noting.

We can infer from the fact that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction that he lacked either the intention or the ability to have them. Something is missing from the equation. Maybe he had the intention to build them later. Maybe he was working to get back the ability. But he really couldn't have had both.

It's just 'p's and 'q's.

-- Josh Marshall

I am, personally, having trouble with Josh's logic.  Usually I am not one to argue with Marshall.

Ever.  We share common political views, and let's face it, he is far better versed in the machinations of our political system than I will ever be.

But...

I read Marshall's entry while watching a cooking show last night, so try to follow my train of thought.

Consider a simple potato gratin.

Let's say I have the intent to cook a potato gratin. That is, at some point in the near future I will make a potato gratin.

You know what else? I also have the capability of making a gratin. I have all the constituent ingredients: potato, half and half, salt and pepper, herbs, mushrooms, other filler. I also have all the requisite tools: gratin baking dish, oven, electricity.

But you know what else, if you were to walk into my house right now you couldn't find a potato gratin to save your life.

Maybe it's different with WMD...

Did Iraq have any of the requisite materials for producing WMD?

Any comments/explanations greatly appreciated.

Mike

•  Understood, but

  Marshall's point was that Iraq also had the opportunity; he had an evening alone in the kitchen with the potato gratin.  Why wouldn't he make some?

  by Croatoan on Thu Mar 18, 2004 at 06:57:22 PM PDT

•  Agree

  Actually, I had a similar reaction.

  Although to respond to your point, Saddam was missing a lot of the ingredients to make his potato gratin.

  But the problem, for me, was that Marshall was shifting the meaning of the word "capability" that the Admin lackeys intended it in (and I don't think I'm being generous here). When they referred to "capability," I don't think they meant "did he have his potato," I think they meant, "does he have a gratin recipe and the technical ability to work the knife, the stove, and the oven?" Which he probably did. He had his share of AQKhan types who were all too willing and able to become the father of their country's nuclear program.

  That said, I think Joe Wilson effectively shredded the next part of their argument, which was that they'd be able to get a potato from Niger easily.

  by emptywheel on Thu Mar 18, 2004 at 06:58:19 PM PDT

•  I see.

  Yes, Josh did skip a step. In his example, his math produces a total of about 3.9, but is missing that last crucial tenth.

  Still, it's worth thinking about a slightly different example. If you had both a freshly purchased package of savory, delicious Stove Top(TM) brand stuffing in your home, as well as the intent to prepare Stove Top(TM) brand stuffing -- America's favorite! -- for dinner, would your child's friend be justified in unilaterally declaring, and I quote, "Stove Top(TM)?! I'm stayin'!"

  by Kagro X on Thu Mar 18, 2004 at 07:01:26 PM PDT

•  Intent = Desire

  Marshall doesn't mention desire which is something that Bush has often mentioned.  I think he is (justifiably) including desire in the concept of intent.  But lets consider it separately since the Bush admin has repeatedly said Saddam had capability, desire and intent to make WMD.  If that is true, there would be nothing missing.  Marshall's point is that one of those things must be missing (and he includes desire with intent).

  If you had potatoes AND you wanted to bake them and you had an oven, there would be nothing to stop you from having some tasty potatoes in about an hour.  If you don't have anything to eat in an hour, you were either missing the taters, you didn't have an oven, someone was blocking you from the oven or you were just too lazy.

  by jefff on Thu Mar 18, 2004 at 07:04:21 PM PDT

  •  Or

    you didn't really want those potatoes, no matter how much you had proclaimed that you did.

    by a gilas girl on Thu Mar 18, 2004 at 07:32:18 PM PDT

  •  Can I have some pork chops with that?

    With applesauce, if you've got some handy. And some asparagus for greens? Oh, oh, and Jello pudding. Chocolate, please. None of that butterscotch or, God forbid, pistachio flavor. Now mind you, I like pistachios, but whatever that green stuff is in the Jello packet, it ain't been near a pistachio in its life.

    Ummm...what were we talking about again?

    by Serephin on Thu Mar 18, 2004 at 07:53:03 PM PDT

    •  No pudding

      You haven't been good.

      Or, um...

      You haven't finished your vegetables.

      What would the proper response to a request for pudding from a brutal dictator be?

      No pudding until you start making nice to the Kurds? Pudding...Kurds. Get it?

      Never mind.

      by emptywheel on Thu Mar 18, 2004 at 08:10:22 PM PDT

•  I think...

    That Josh was thinking like this: The Administration logic (as applied to potato gratin) is like this:

  1. Saddam had all the ingrediants for potato gratin, including skilled chefs capable of making potato gratin.
  2. Saddam was really jonesin for some potato gratin. It's what he really wanted.

    Now, you might intend to make potato gratin. Why haven't you? Maybe you're wanting to do it next week. Or you just don't feel like potato gratin today. Or maybe it just sounds like too much effort to cook today....

    On the other hand, by the White House accounts, Saddam wanted that damn potato so bad he was willing to kill for it...

    At the very least, the White House logic demands that Saddam be at least trying to make some potato gratin. He might not be finished, it might not be good potato gratin, but he'd be at least cooking it.

  by Morat on Thu Mar 18, 2004 at 07:05:42 PM PDT

•  I was also thrown by this a little bit...

  I also usually agree with Josh, and also didn't quite get what he meant here.  I actually had to draw out the logic to understand what he was driving at.
  
  
  Assume that the following statement is true: If someone possesses the intention to do something and has the capability to do it, then they will do it.  Logically, this is of the form p+q -> r.  By the contrapositive, we have that ~r -> ~p | ~q, or in English, "if it is not the case that r, then it is either not the case that p, or not the case that q, or not the case that both p and q."  So Josh is inferring from the fact that Saddam doesn't seem to have WMD that either he didn't have the intention to build them, or he didn't have the capability to build them.  
  
  
  Naturally, the validity of his point is predicated on the assumption that if an entity has the intention and capability to do something, they will do it.  I wouldn't harp so much on the point about intentionality, as there's not really any way to evaluate what was going on in Saddam's head.  But I think the facts have proven that he did not have the capability to build and possess WMDs, so that part of the predicate is false.  So it seems to me that though the administration is lying, they are lying in a logically consistent fashion.  
  

  by jwills on Thu Mar 18, 2004 at 07:10:05 PM PDT

  •  One more possibility

    That, knowing the American desire for attacking those with potato gratin, he deliberately waited to make it.

    He possibly had the desire (how Bush would know that is still to be demonstrated), he possibly had the ingredients (still to be found), he possibly had the capability (no sign of manufacturing facilities and a bunch of scientists in the country whose individual skills, if properly assembled, could produce the PG in an unkNowable amount of time), but he may have realised that any attempt to dig up the spuds and fire up the oven would be detected and result in bad things so he delayed his gratification.

    I think this is where the problem actually is. The US generally has no concept of delayed gratification, or gratinfication as the case may be. Its approach is that I must consume everything that will ever be possible in my own lifetime, in fact, I must do it all immediately so that, if something else becomes possible I will consume that as well immediately. They would find it impossible to grasp that someone could actually think strategically and delay anything at all that they might desire, regardless of the consequences.

    (Bush desired Iraq, he must have it, NOW, NOW! I TELL YOU, I WANT IT NOW!!!)

    Its not about these static items but the distance from imminent danger that Saddam presented. Consider, in order to attack America, or even his neighbours he needed;

    • To have the ingredients for the weapons - Which he didn't
    • To assemble the knowledge needed to build and deploy the weapons - The people existed but they were dispersed in the population, so he would have to have assembled the team which would have attracted attention - Which he didn't
    • To be able to import the tools to build the factory - Which he didn't
    • To build the factory - Which he didn't
    • To conceal the factory - Which he didn't have to
    • To conceal the operation of the factory - Which he didn't have to
    • To produce and test the weapons - Which he didn't
    • To produce and distribute and conceal the weapons - Which he didn't
    • To design, build, test and produce the delivery systems for the weapons - Which he didn't (Oh wait, the inspectors found some rockets that might have infringed the ban under certain circumstances - they what? They found them, oh, right.)
    • To train his military in the use of these weapons - Which he didn't
    • To develop the protocols and command structures and processes through which the weapons would be used in battle - Which he didn't
    • To trust his military to have the weapons and use them only at his command - Which he didn't
    • To mount such a successful counterintelligence and disinformation operation that the best resources of the western Civil and military intelligence services would actually believe that he had done all these things, knowing that they were in defiance of a UN resolution and that having done so he opened his country to military attack, an attack against which he had, by definition, no credible defense.

    Which, according to Bushco, He Did

    Since Bush was able to understand Saddam's desires to have the weapons (see above), perhaps Bush could explain why Saddam, would desire to perform this massive feat of legerdemain in order to cut his own throat.

    by Deep Dark on Thu Mar 18, 2004 at 08:09:51 PM PDT

•  I'll gladly pay you today for a gratin on Tuesday

  "Maybe it's different with WMD..."

  Uh, yeah.  The difference is the goal of developing ABC's is to have them NOW, not to merely have the ingredients to make them at some point.  I probably have the ingredients for improvised explosive devices in my garage right now and a copy of "The Anarchist's Cookbook" on my shelves, but I can't blow anything up right now; just as you can't produce a gratin ready to serve at this time.

   

  by admadm on Thu Mar 18, 2004 at 07:11:21 PM PDT

•  Marshall still seems

  to have problems with the war.

  by Marisacat on Thu Mar 18, 2004 at 07:20:55 PM PDT

•  Totally off subject...

  ... this diary entry made me extremely hungry.

  On subject:

  Yeah, those two qualifiers don't necessarily add up to "he had them."  That was completely my first impression.

  by alkatt on Thu Mar 18, 2004 at 07:25:28 PM PDT

•  You're right--Marshall is wrong

  ...and the sort of faulty argumentation he engages in with his "capabilities + intentions = effects" equation doesn't help.

  WARNING: what follows can be charitably described as beating a dead horse. I couldn't help myself, however.

  <BeatingDeadHorse>
  What's wrong with his argument can—I think—be explained in terms of the difference between necessary and sufficient conditions.

  A necessary condition for some state of affairs is a condition such that if it is not met, then the state of affairs will not be the case. Its being met, however, does not guarantee that the state of affairs will be the case.

  A sufficient condition, on the other hand, is one that is true if a given state of affairs is the case. Its falsehood, however, does not mean the state of affairs does not
  obtain.

  (NB: those of you who have taken or can remember some logic, just construct the table for the conditional 'if p then q.' When q is false, then the implication 'if p then q' is false, so q is a necessary condition. Likewise, since 'if p then q' can be true when p is false means that p is a sufficient condition. Hey, Marshall brought up 'p's and 'q's....)

  The conditions Marshall mentions are both necessary conditions for the self-sufficient manufacture of WMDs anywhere (for the sake of simplicity, let's leave out the case of purchasing WMDs.) Suppose, for example, that nation X lacks either the intention or the material to make WMDs. It follows then that nation X cannot manufacture WMDs self-sufficiently. Suppose, on the contrary, that nation Y has both the intention and the material to make WMDs. This does not guarantee that nation Y in fact has WMDs.
  </BeatingDeadHorse>

  You know, the potato gratin example was a lot better. Sorry about that.

  by scissorsmacgillicutty on Thu Mar 18, 2004 at 07:43:27 PM PDT

  •  If you have a problem with Josh's logic

    Then blame the Bush administration for asserting it.  

    It wasn't Josh who famously exclaimed that capabilities + intentions == mushroom cloud.

    by phil on Thu Mar 18, 2004 at 08:54:03 PM PDT

    •  Hold on there....

      Let's take this step by step. I may be wrong at any point, but here's how I read this:
      

      
      
      1. In the quote above, Josh Marshall notes that BushCo, having found no WMDs in Iraq, falls back on the defense that Saddam Hussein had the intention and capability to build nuclear weapons.
      
      
      2. The fact whether Saddam Hussein had either the intention or capability to build nuclear weapons is irrelevant to Marshall's next point, which is...
      
      
      3. that the capability to build a nuclear weapon plus the intention to do so necessarily implies that Iraq must have had nuclear weapons.
      
      
      4. From this Marshall says that claiming Iraq had the intention and capability to build nukes while in fact not having any is logically incorrect.
      
      

      So it is Josh Marshall who's claiming that (intent + capability == nuke). Or to use a notation that I've just come up with and will only hopelessly confuse matters:
      

      
      ^intentNuke + ^capabilityNuke = Nuke
      

      and thus in general
      

      
      ^intentX + ^capabilityX = X
      

      Against this, the diarist notes that he wants to have a potato gratin, has the necessary ingredients for a potato gratin, but there is no potato gratin to be found in his house. So in his case, X = potato gratin, yet
      

      
      ^intentpotato gratin + ^capabilitypotato gratin ≠ potato gratin
      

      Given this counterexample, we have to reject  Josh Marshall's implicit general claim that
      

      
      ^intentX + ^capabilityX = X
      

      And then I started talking about necessary vs. sufficient conditions and—

      The hell with this. I need something to eat. Maybe there's some turkee in the fridge...

      by scissorsmacgillicutty on Fri Mar 19, 2004 at 01:22:36 AM PDT

•  Mmmm . . .

  Potatoes . . . <drooly gargly noise>

  by Tuffy on Thu Mar 18, 2004 at 07:46:52 PM PDT

  •  Damn you, Tuffy--

    You beat me to it!

    by qwerty on Thu Mar 18, 2004 at 09:18:28 PM PDT

•  Potatoe?

  Maybe it has something to do with the missing letter?

  Seriously, Josh didn't express himself well.

  by Armando on Thu Mar 18, 2004 at 09:00:50 PM PDT

•  The original statement

  Is badly phrased, but yes, Marshall is a little off -

  Saddam Hussein still had both the intention and the capability to build and possess weapons of mass destruction.

  Saddam Hussein has the intention to build + possess WMD.
  Saddamn Hussein has the capability to build + possess WMD.
  Therefore, Saddam Hussein has WMD.

  Perhaps this is the slippery slope fallacy: without any arguments that show Saddam Hussein actually built WMD, one assumes that because intention and capability were present, the WMD must exist.  And I suspect BushCo relied a lot on people's tendency to fill in that exact blank here.

  Yes?  I took Logic 101 like six years ago, so.. I forget stuff.

  by daria g on Thu Mar 18, 2004 at 09:51:39 PM PDT

•  I don't disagree with Marshall

  Did Iraq have any of the requisite materials for producing WMD?

  That's what we haven't found.  It's not just finished weapons, we haven't even found the parts to make the au gratin.

  Marshall is right.  Hussein didn't have capability.  He might have had intent, one could say because they stashed all this information from their old programs.  But he wasn't in a position to spin up manufacturing in this modern day.  It would have taken him years to get back online.  i.e. first he had to relearn how to grow potatoes.
  

  by Steve4Clark on Thu Mar 18, 2004 at 10:56:26 PM PDT