This won’t be here for long…

I felt the desire to actually tackle a “truth or Opinion” exercise. It seems that Leticia seems to think she is always CLEARLY identifying her opinions as such, and her facts are always soundly supported, while your dear professor constantly asserts opinion as fact… So let’s start some textual analysis of our own, shall we? Straight from what has been the posting with perhaps one of the longest comment streams…

Leticia Writes:

Gay Policy Biting The Pentagon on The Butt

I suppose the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy works to an extent, but once someone is outed and the military releases them it certainly calls into question [“certainly” a dogmatic statement, if not one asserting FACT] the rational for the policy, especially when we are at war. We are going through military left and right, either due to death, incapacitation or exhaustion. [“going through the military left and right” seems to assert this as fact. Just how many soldiers does it take to be going through them? Hmmm? Reads like fact–but is of course, OPINION] Recruitment is down and will probably stay low. [Assertion of FACT, but actually again opinion, or at least poorly researched. As Brother_Bones posted on the comments, most services are not having problems recruiting.] Safe to say that policy on gays in the military starts to sound a bit stupid all of a sudden, don’t it? [Sounding stupid–clearly opinion… right? No matter how “safe” she thinks it is to say]

Also, I never quite understood what the difference was between horny homosexuals chasing after each other, and horny heterosexuals chasing after the opposite sex in the military. The military is aware we are now co-ed? One of the best Iraq stories I heard was from a friend in the Army who in between casing empty homes in the area he was designated to cover, found time for some one-on-one with another female soldier right behind a huge cement wall in the Iraqi heat. Of course, the military will probably look at that and think it’s fabulous. [Anecdote–so perhaps factual, but certainly not sufficient data to form a valid opinion] (Maybe “fabulous” is the wrong word.) But the point is, if they are concerned about inappropriate behavior , does it really matter which two sexes are involved?

So what we have here, despite the protestations, and constant obfuscations from the perveyors of smoke, is a blog full of opinions asserted as fact, anecdotes put forward as arcetype, and *I didn’t write it!* (now THAT is Fabulous!)