Demosophia

Rockefeller, Levin and Feinstein on Truth and Method

The aim stated by Senators Rockefeller, Feinstein and Levin, for the second phase of the work by the Committee to Investigate Pre-Iraq Intelligence is to "assess" whether the intelligence "justified" the public statements made by the Bush Administration. It presumes that the members of this committee can, and will, apply some consistent unbiased standard to the correspondence between the certainty and uncertainty about what we knew and what administration officials said. They're apparently going to close the gap between natural and scientific language that Habermas and Gadamer left open. That'll be fun.

But, why do we need a Senate Intelligence Committee to go through these kinds of heuristic deliberations? What makes their rule of thumb better than my rule of thumb, as a citizen, concerning the public statements of our officials? Doesn't their hubris imply a whopping condescension toward those of us in the Peanut Gallery? Why is Carl Levin's opinion about the President's Niger statement better than mine? Will he take into account the fact that Wilson's own debrief with the CIA supported concerns that Iraq was interested in buying uranium, and that the intelligence agencies of the UK and France still maintain that Iraq was seeking such a buy? Or will he just gauge the statement against the common meme that Wilson was truthful in his NYT dispatch, and that he has adequately debunked that whole yellow-cake myth by sipping a little sweet tea in Africa? Anyone taking bets?

And doesn't the urgency placed on this report by the unprecedented grandstanding of the Democrats also imply a profoundly statist deference toward the black-box hermeneutic/analytic skills of a group of high-placed non-experts? Next thing we know they'll be proposing to re-write the New Testament in order to make it more "accurate." They could sure help us out by "assessing" the extent to which the certainties and uncertainties about the Resurrection justify the many public statements about it by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. About time they got around to that, dontcha think?

And how much is this Report from Mount Olympus going to cost us, anyway? Couldn't we just siphon that to the victims of Katrina, Rita, and Wilma? Frankly I'd rather have a comprehensive audit of FEMA. That would make some sense.

Posted by Demosophist at November 7, 2005 11:39 AM | TrackBack