tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2569772432953120875.post1299137922805526132..comments2024-02-22T19:45:29.872-05:00Comments on Sources And Methods: Part 9 -- Waffle Words And Intel-Speak (The Revolution Begins On Page Five: The Changing Nature Of The NIE And Its Implications For Intelligence)Kristan J. Wheatonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02566135545863154089noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2569772432953120875.post-22463286332081256552008-01-14T12:26:00.000-05:002008-01-14T12:26:00.000-05:00The Iraq stability estimate is a fundamentally dif...The Iraq stability estimate is a fundamentally different animal from most two-sided "will they or won't they" estimates, because of the n-way ground truth involved. The proliferation of qualifiers and conditionals is more a consequence of overly general hypotheses and in some cases partial or missing hypotheses rather than of weasel-wording. As an example, the sentence you selected "A multi-stage process involving the Iraqi<BR/>Government ...could foster" is subsidiary to the bolded, unqualified proposition "we judge these initiatives will only<BR/>translate into ...stability if the Iraqi Government accepts and supports them." Given that unqualified assertion, it is probably more appropriate to criticize the NIE substantively for not following it with any estimate, qualified or not, as to whether the government (or, more realistically, the Ministry of Defense? the Ministry of the Interior?) will indeed support those initiatives. More importantly, it also did not advance the mirroring hypothesis, that stability also depends on the local initiators supporting the central government, and the answer probably differs locale to locale.<BR/>Effective framing of testable hypotheses is an essential step to avoiding vagueness and excessive qualification. A "don't know" answer is also sometimes better than relying on qualification to sday "don't know."Colts Neck Solutions1https://www.blogger.com/profile/10231597289219560442noreply@blogger.com