Word: argumentative
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...made a series of fundamentalist diatribes for the TV cameras. A senior Italian antiterror official admits that increased powers have been abused. "We cannot be indiscriminate, which would be a great victory for the terrorists who are seeking to create a clash of civilizations," he says. That's the argument of civil-rights activists too. "Our concern is that draconian policies are usually counterproductive," says Hugill. The committee of British parliamentarians, which blasted internment for foreign terror suspects, also criticized the government for not trying alternatives that might be equally effective, like electronic tagging and intensive surveillance, or giving prosecutors...
...Washington easily won the argument at the UN that the international body could not tolerate Iraq's refusal to submit to inspections - the Security Council unanimously passed a resolution requiring that Iraq immediately and unconditionally readmit the inspectors. Which Iraq did. The inspectors visited hundreds of sites, and turned up nothing. Inspections, of course, provided the opportunity for renewed intelligence gathering in Iraq, and the ability to update what intelligence services knew about Iraq's activities. The presence of the inspectors also functioned as a block on any ongoing WMD activities. But the Bush team had plainly planned...
...talking point recently heard repeatedly among defenders of the Bush administration's decision to go to war is the claim that the Bush administration acted on the same intelligence assessments used by the Clinton administration five years earlier. The argument is designed to defend the White House against the charge heard from many former intelligence professionals that administration officials pressured the intelligence agencies to provide the answers it wanted to hear - any inquiry may be expected to face substantial pressure to investigate the role played by the Office of Special Plans established in the Pentagon, allegedly to cherry-pick...
...edged closer to legalizing the purchase of prescription drugs from Canada. An amendment sanctioning sales to U.S. pharmacies was sponsored by Representative Gil Gutknecht, a Minnesota Republican, and approved in July by a vote of 243 to 186. Notably, Gutknecht's language provided ample protection for consumers--long the argument cited by the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry for prohibiting Canadian drug purchases. The provision authorized U.S. pharmacies to import prescription drugs made in Canada and other industrialized countries as long as manufacturers used counterfeit-resistant technologies and the drugs were approved...
...ironic silver lining in the current wave of violence is that it offers persuasive evidence in support of Washington's argument that elections can't be held before its July 1 deadline for handing power to an Iraqi provisional government. The leaders of Iraq's Shiite majority have rejected the U.S. plan to select such a government at regional caucuses controlled by its handpicked Iraqi Governing Council. Instead, the country's most powerful spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, has demanded democratic elections, and rather than put itself at odds with a pro-democracy movement among Iraq's majority community...