Quote Originally Posted by Sean Osborne View Post
Rasmussen conducted "National Survey of 800 Likely Voters" on 5/6 December 2007. Here is the report on the results of that poll (emphasis added) which reflects the mindset of the American citizen with a high degree of confidence (95%).



Sounds to me like the most recent NIE accomplished zip with respect to the voting American public (i.e.: was a big time failure).
I'm not sure what the relelvance of this post is. The NIE is not targeted at the GAP (great American public). Its purpose, like any intelligence product, is to answer questions asked by deicsionmakers in order to help inform the decisions that they make.

I earlier tried to make a post about the problem of getting any kind of consensus about the NIE's meaning/truth. However, it was eaten by etherspace. I'll try again now.

Statements are not true in a vacuum. They are true in a complex of a question and an answer. The question itself is framed against a backdrop of presuppostion held by the questioner. If the NIE does not provide an answer to the question asked by the decisionmaker in the context of those presuppostions, then it is neither true nor fals. It is simply irrelevant.

Here's an example. I see a paper on a bulletin board. I ask myself, "Why did someone post that paper on the bulletin board?" I am seeking an answer that provides me with someone'as motivation for putting the paper on the board and have presupposed that it was indeed posted on the board by someone. Now if the answer I get is that the paper lists the hours of operation of the local pizza shop or that no one posted the paper, it just appeared mysteriously by an act of divine providence, I will not have an answer that I accept as true. Neither response answers my question in the context of my presuppostions.

I suspect that this may be why the poll results are so negative. The GAP idn't get its questions answered in a way that accorded with their presupposition, built up since 1978 by the US MSM, that the Iranians are deceitful scoundrels. But, of course, they were not the customer.

As a further point, I think the above analysis (for which I cannot take credit--it comes from R.G Collingwood in his Essay on Philosophical Method and his Essay on Metaphysics) probably explains most of our so-called "intelligence failures." Decisionmakers dismissed the intel they received because it didn't answer their question or did not fit their presuppositions. Then they acted on instinct rather than with reason.