Sophistry:
1. Plausible but Fallacious argumentation
2. Plausible but misleading or fallacious argument.


1. The art or process of reasoning; logic.
2. The proactice of a sophist; falacious reasoning; reasoning sound in
appearance only.

Syn: Fallacy

A deliberately invalid argument displaying ingenuity in reasoning in
the hope of deceiving someone.

The arguement that a person who kills a terrorist is not guilty of
killing the civilian the terrorist is using as a shield, that the
terrorist who grabbed the civilian is guilty of the civilian's death is
a piece of sophistry.

It is an argument used to absolve soldiers of guilt over the killing of
civilians in order to reach their true target.

The problem is that if you successfully ingrain this concept into a
soldier, you end up with a person return home who has learned that it
doesn't matter who you hurt or destroy to reach a goal so long as you
reach your goal and you think your goal.

This is a very bad ethical attitude to have in the world. Yet the
military continues to ingrain it into personnel w/o realizing that these
people will eventually be returning to the civilian world and civilian
life.

So, what is the fallacy in this argument?