I Think I've Found the Problem

Scientists identify brain's concept control core

Here's the science behind the politics.

"NORWICH (Reuters) - Scientists believe they may have finally identified the part of the brain that deals with the critical issue of matching words to everyday objects.

Using brain scans of people suffering from Semantic Dementia -- the second most common form of dementia after Alzheimer's disease in people under 65 -- they have found that the front end of the temporal lobe seems to be crucial to conceptual application.

'People have been talking about how the brain encodes concepts for 150 years. We believe we have found it,' Matthew Lambon-Ralph of Manchester University told the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science on Wednesday. "

And here's the politics.

WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday that he was wrong to predict a quicker end to fighting in Iraq but added that the Bush administration would invade again — even knowing that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, the administration's primary rationale for war.

"It was the right thing to do and if we had it to do over again, we'd do exactly the same thing," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Cheney said invasion of Iraq was warranted even without the stockpiled weapons because Saddam Hussein would have defeated the sanctions and rebuilt his weapons programs.

Cheney said U.S. allies in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan doubt Americans' resolve and fear they could be left to face terrorists alone. He also said domestic war debate emboldens adversaries.

"They can't beat us in a stand-up fight — they never have — but they're absolutely convinced they can break our will, that the American people don't have the stomach for the fight," Cheney said.

[full story]

"Semantic Dementia" = "Neocon Thinking"

UPDATE: More of the same.

Sept. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Vice President Dick Cheney said the ``world is much better off'' since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and the Bush administration was right to wage war even though Iraq turned out not to have weapons of mass destruction.
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Cheney defended the Bush administration's strategy in Iraq and disputed opinion polls that show most Americans think the conflict has created more terrorists, the war was a mistake and Iraq isn't the central front on terrorism, as President George W. Bush maintains.
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The vice president defended his statements before the war that Americans would be greeted as liberators and that he didn't expect the war to be lengthy and cost many lives.

``That's true within the context of the battle against the Saddam Hussein regime and his forces,'' Cheney said. ``That went very quickly.'' The subsequent insurgency has been ``long and costly and bloody,'' he said.
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``It was the intelligence all of us believed,'' Cheney said, repeatedly citing assurances from George Tenet, then director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Tenet told the president that the case against Saddam Hussein was a ``slam dunk,'' Cheney said. Iraq turned out not to have stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.
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Two reports released Friday by the Senate Intelligence Committee said that Bush administration claims justifying the war against Iraq were based on intelligence that was fragmented, conflicting, and at times unreliable.

[full story]

My emphasis to highlight the semantic dementia.