Gordon R. Mitchell

Team B Intelligence Coups

The 2003 Iraq prewar intelligence failure was not simply a case of the U.S. intelligence community providing flawed data to policy-makers. It also involved subversion of the competitive intelligence analysis process, where unofficial intelligence boutiques “stovepiped” misleading intelligence assessments directly to policy-makers and undercut intelligence community input that ran counter to the White Houses preconceived preventive war of choice against Iraq. This essay locates historical precursors to such “Team B intelligence coups” in the original 1976 Team B exercise and the 1998 Rumsfeld Commission report on ballistic missile threats. Since competitive intelligence analysis exercises are designed to improve decision-making by institutionalizing the learning function of debate, their dynamics stand to be elucidated through critique informed by argumentation theory. Such inquiry has salience in the current political milieu, where intelligence reform efforts and the investigations that drive them tend to sidestep the Team B intelligence coup phenomenon.

Debate as a Weapon of Mass Destruction

It is 2002, nearly a year after 9/11. A New York City high school receives a package emblazoned with the words ‘‘WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION.’’ The police are summoned, the building evacuated, and the sender of the package frantically called. Inside the package, investigators find ... evidence. Debate evidence. The school had received a package of documents for New York Urban Debate League students, who were preparing to debate the national interscholastic debate topic for that year, ‘‘Resolved: That the United States Federal Government should establish a foreign policy significantly limiting the use of weapons of mass destruction.’’ Was the package dangerous? It did not contain a bomb. Yet suspicions about the box’s contents and those involved in the transaction lingered. This episode is a representative anecdote for the ‘‘global war on terror,’’ where lines separating friend and foe are persistently blurred, forcing combatants and bystanders alike to perform their allegiances in word and deed. A hyper-politicization of speech contours contemporary public discourse, policing the line between the sayable and unsayable and sorting people into neat categories such as ‘‘with us or with the terrorists.’’ We have seen this before. In another indefinite war of ideology, debate was similarly suspected of being a weapon of mass destruction capable of jeopardizing homeland security. As the Soviets tested their atom bomb in August of 1949, Americans worried that nuclear secrets had been passed to the USSR from communist sympathizers within the US government. Fear of being ‘‘sold out’’ by ‘‘fifth columnists’’ at home increased penalties for dissent, placing blame at the feet of anyone who dared undermine American security by sowing division.

The us obesity “epidemic”: Metaphor, method, or madness?

In 2000, US Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson mobilized the US public health infrastructure to deal with escalating trends of excess body weight. A cornerstone of this effort was a report entitled The Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Prevent and Decrease Overweight and Obesity. The report stimulated a great deal of public discussion by utilizing the distinctive public health terminology of an epidemic to describe the growing prevalence of obesity in the US population. We suggest that the ensuing controversy was fueled in part by the report’s ambiguous usage of the evocative term “epidemic.” In some passages, the report seems to use “epidemic” in a literal sense, suggesting that rising prevalence of excess body weight should be defined technically as a disease outbreak. Other passages of the report present the same key term metaphorically, leaving readers with the impression that the epidemic language is invoked primarily for rhetorical effect. Here, we explore dynamics and implications of both interpretations. This analysis sheds light on the ongoing public argument about the appropriate societal response to steadily increasing body sizes in the US population; likewise, it capitalizes on the accumulated knowledge that the field of public health has garnered from combating diverse historic epidemics. Our interdisciplinary approach deploys critical tools from the fields of rhetoric, sociology and epidemiology. In particular, we draw from metaphor theory and public address scholarship to elucidate how the Call to Action frames public deliberation on obesity. We turn to the applied public health literature to develop a reading of the report that suggests a novel approach to the problem—application of the Epidemic Investigation protocol to streamline the public health response and reframe the public argument about obesity.

SIMULATED PUBLIC ARGUMENT AS A PEDAGOGICAL PLAY ON WORLDS.

Since ancient times, schools have served as sites of dramatic performance in society. Only this century, however, have teachers begun to recognize the value of dramatic role-play simulation as a generic pedagogical tool for teaching a wide variety of subjects ranging across the curriculum from psychology to political science. This essay explores public argument role-play as a pedagogical method with broad curricular applicability and unique potential to open up valuable avenues of learning.

Public Argument Action Research and the Learning Curve of New Social Movements

Alain Touraines method of social movement action research holds promise as a theoretical exemplar for public argument scholarship motivated by the “activist” or “ideological” turn in rhetorical criticism. Touraines sociological approach generates analytical insight and political traction from the synergistic coupling of academic critique with intervention into fields of public argument. Efforts to hitch Touraines method of action research to public argument scholarship stand to enrich study of “new social movements,” which exhibit a similar tendency to learn by cycling iteratively between grass roots consciousness raising and public sphere argumentation.

Defining the Subject of Consent in DNA Research

The advent of population-specific genomic research has prompted calls for invention of informed consent protocols that would treat entire social groups as research subjects as well as endow such groups with authority as agents of consent. Critics of such an unconventional ethical norm of “group consent” fear the rhetorical effects of approaching social groups with offers to participate in dialogues about informed consent. Addressing a specific population as the collective subject of genomic research, on this logic, adds currency to the potentially dangerous public opinion that such a group is bound by genetic ties. The paper considers the problem of group and individual identity within the rhetorical dynamics of the discourse and politics of consent.

Placebo defense: Operation desert mirage? The rhetoric of patriot missile accuracy in the 1991 Persian Gulf War∗

During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the apparent success of the Patriot missile defense system served as the official centerpiece of a rhetorical campaign to portray Operation Desert Storm as an unprecedented mission ushering in a new era of American military dominance based on technological superiority. Post‐war disclosures have not only cast serious doubt on Patriots wartime performance, but have also exposed a widespread program of strategic deception employed by Pentagon officials to protect the fiction of Patriots Gulf War wizardry. This essay explains how Gulf War audiences were misled, assesses the rhetorical windfall flowing from perceived Patriot effectiveness, and criticizes the Pentagons campaign of strategic deception as normatively bankrupt.

Forensics as Scholarship: Testing Zarefsky's Bold Hypothesis in a Digital Age

The tables of contents from the 1915–1917 volumes of the Quarterly Journal of Public Speaking reveal how the field of communications academic lineage can be traced back to the forensic debating tradition. In the U.S., that traditions practical roots were established by hundreds of contracts between universities to hold intercollegiate debates for public audiences. Later in the 20th century, the advent of organized debate tournaments turned forensics into a specialized laboratory for argumentation, where contest round practice yielded first a stock-issues model of argument, followed by multiple debate paradigms, and then a series of critical rhetorics. We envision a next evolutionary step where forensics moves to seize novel opportunities offered by the digital age to refresh its practice as a “participatory culture. “Key to this evolution is recognition of David Zarefskys insights into the relationship between argument, criticism, and judgment. We illustrate the potential of debate to model strategies of new media literacy through adaptation of his hypothesis-testing model of argument to digital contexts.

Whose Shoe Fits Best? Dubious Physics and Power Politics in the TMD Footprint Controversy

Apparent design breakthroughs in short-range missile defense systems such as Theater High-Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) have prompted questions about the legality of such systems under the 1972 Antiballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. Prominent physicists have used computer “footprint” methodology to prove that if engineered to specifications, THAAD might exceed ABM Treaty performance limits banning highly effective missile defense systems. In response, missile defense officials commissioned Sparta, Inc. to conduct secret research casting doubt on the validity of such findings. The substantial diplomatic issues at stake and the interesting rhetorical dynamics involved in this dispute warrant close scholarly analysis. Attention to the iterative relationship between the interpenetrating spheres of public argument and scientific practice in this case yields novel insight about the processes in which technical knowledge of defense systems is forged and raises fresh issues for the “closure project” in science and technology controversy studies.

Promoting Patient Phronesis Communication Patterns in an Online Lifestyle Program Coordinated With Primary Care

Phronesis, or practical wisdom developed through experience, is an Aristotelian concept that can shed light on the capacities of patients to make health-related decisions and engage in healthy behaviors. In this article, the authors develop a conceptual framework for understanding the role of phronesis in lifestyle change as well as its relationship to patient activation, which is considered to be a critical component of the Chronic Care Model and patient education in general. The authors develop the concept of phronesis by analyzing qualitatively the comments made by 35 participants working to manage chronic health issues in a weight-loss study. The authors iteratively coded transcribed passages of exit interviews for phronesis and patient activation. These passages provide experientially grounded content for evaluating the use of phronesis and its development among individuals engaging in lifestyle change. Phronesis is expressed in 31% of participant responses to questions regarding the relationship between the online lifestyle intervention, participant health, and participant readiness to engage in productive clinical encounters with health care practitioners. Of those responses, 73% express some level of patient activation. The authors conclude that phronesis may be an important new tool for understanding successful self-management support, with potential usefulness in the creation of tailored lifestyle interventions, the development of patient activation, and the ability of participants to enact health-related behaviors.