BM: (gritts teeth) I'm afraid that I must agree with Geo here... I posted the paragraph that Gore said a while ago, you added the question and a further paragraph, but that wasn't strictly necessary for anyone who wanted to wade back through too many Posts of Geo and I sniping at each other...
You however did support my claim that reasonable people can read Gore's words and not come to the conclusion that he made a misstatement and for that I thank you immensely.
Reasonable people can also read it and arrive at the conclusion that he did make a misstatement. However, (and this is the super big gigantic key point which Geo has failed to address in any of his Posts) the default position is that someone is innocent until proven guilty. i.e. In a messy and muddled situation Gore should be given the benefit of the doubt and be considered to have told the truth not the other way around. If we were to believe that the accused were always guilty before being proven guilty or that all that was necessary to prove someone guilty was to find a couple of reasonable people who thought them guilty then that would be a messed up world indeed.
Edit: Oh yeah I totally agree with BM about the Space Empires V thread being totally off topic and regret my small roll in that derailment...
This thread however is clearly the general off topic political heated discussions and don't really feel like we are wandering off topic here. Hopefully just having a good old fashioned disagreement which I hope everyone is enjoying...
[ May 30, 2003, 16:54: Message edited by: teal ]