[ExI] Retired military officers come forward about UFO visitations

[The Avantguardian]

----- Original Message ----
> From: Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com>
> To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
> Sent: Sat, October 23, 2010 2:17:17 PM
> Subject: Re: [ExI] Retired military officers come forward about UFO 
visitations
> 
> On 10/23/2010 3:53 PM, Henrique Moraes Machado wrote:
> 
> >> >  In a court setting, the personal testimony of these many men, due to
> >> >  their excellent individual reputations&  military service as officers,
> >> >  would win the case!
> 
> > Fair enough. But we're not in court and what these people are asking
> > us to believe demands more than a mere testimony. You just made an
> > argument of authority.
> 
> I don't think John did. It looks like an argument from (apparent or purported) 
>credibility. Authority, misused as an argument, seems to me to connote power 
>extraneous to the assertion. Credibility derives from expertise, long 
>experience, absence of duress, history of honesty, etc.
> 
> Whether such UFO testimonials by former military are credible on these grounds 
>remains uncertain. It's obviously not true that there is *no* evidence brought 
>forward; Col. Charles Halt (then deputy base commander of Bentwaters RAF base) 
>famously has a voice tape that he claims records events in Rendlesham forest 
>during a close apparent anomalous craft sighting. Others have challenged that 
>explanation of what he and his team saw, but I don't think anyone is saying the 
>tape was fraudulent (or non-existent--it can be heard online, after all, so it 
>clearly *exists*).

I agree, Damien. This is some of the most compelling evidence I have seen to 
date on the matter, aside from my own sighting of a UFO while in the 
military. In adddition to their top secret military clearences, these men would 
have been routinely screened by the U.S. government with medical and psych 
evaluations. During the height of the cold war, the U.S., did not turn the keys 
to its nuclear arsenal over to anyone but the most stable and reliable of 

individuals.

If one thinks all these men could have independantly and simultaeneously hoaxed 
or hallucinated this whole affair, with nuclear armageddon or at least their 
careers at stake, that stretches skepticism to the point of blind negative 
faith. I will do some more digging when I get off of work to see if I can find 
the FOIA documents that they say the Airforce released to them on the matter 
online somewhere. Thanks for this, John. 

Stuart LaForge 

“To be normal is the ideal aim of the unsuccessful.” -Carl Jung