At 17:06 20-10-2002 -0400, John Giorgis wrote:And as we all know, that is a skill you excel at...You asked me to answer, "Why do European conutries continue to insist on UN support if they consider the UN to be a discredited organization?"If I respond to that question, with the statement: "The Europeans don't believe that the UN is discredited" - then I have not answered your question, now have I? That is because you asked me a conditional question, and one cannot answer a conditional question by rejecting the conditional. That is, as you say, evading the question.
Since you are lack either the will or the intelligence (or both) to answer my question, I will answer it for you.
THE QUESTION:
Why would countries (European and other) insist on UN support if they would consider the UN to be a discredited body?
THE ANSWER (as it should have come from JDG):
Indeed, Jeroen, it would not make sense for those countries to insist on UN support if they would consider the UN to be a discredited body. However, as you have correctly pointed out, they *are* insisting on UN support. It therefore logically follows that those countries do not consider the UN to be a discredited body. As it his extremely unlikely that at the same time I am right and hundreds of thousands of politicians and diplomats worldwide are wrong, I concede that my statement "the UN is a discredited body" can no longer be maintained as a statement of fact. Therefore, I hereby retract that statement.
Jeroen. This is exactly the WRONG kind of paraphrasing, proving that you can be just as immature at debating as John can be.
Paraphrasing is an art of actually coming to grips with what your opponent means, not a caricature straw-man that you want to see and argue against, because it makes you feel good.
Your "answer" is the one you want -- total and abject surrender. You'll not get it. So why push such an offensive 'answer' at all?
John, you are just as bad. You should have conceded Jeroen's contradiction long ago, a minor matter, and moved on, instead of evading it and giving him an excuse to focus on a semantic point.
NOW... may I ask that people please remove "Brin:" from the current set of subject lines? I will not be able to answer for a couple of weeks anyway. Let's start fresh when we see whether the blatant (there can be no other logical reason) attempted DogWag works or not. If divided government was wise under Clinton (GWB said so then) it's just as wise now. Let's give it to him.
Or I shudder over what he'll try in 2004.
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