I Have A Dumb Question

[Dinger]

I am not nearly as knowledgeable as many here on political terminology, so I ask this question: What is a red herring?
(I know it's not a fish)

[Irishladdie]

1. Here you go..

Also Known as: Smoke Screen, Wild Goose Chase.

Description of Red Herring
A Red Herring is a fallacy in which an irrelevant topic is presented in order to divert attention from the original issue. The basic idea is to "win" an argument by leading attention away from the argument and to another topic. This sort of "reasoning" has the following form:


Topic A is under discussion.
Topic B is introduced under the guise of being relevant to topic A (when topic B is actually not relevant to topic A).
Topic A is abandoned.
This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because merely changing the topic of discussion hardly counts as an argument against a claim.

[Dinger]

2. You Mean Like The Iraq war?

Topic A (Bin Laden)
Topic B (Hussein/Iraq) SPin the $hit out of B so they forget about A?