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Old Nov 20, 2003 | 09:24 PM
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qtiger
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Originally posted by DVPGSR
No I think I got exactly what you wrote. Maybe your choice of words does not accurately reflect your intentions?
Let us dissect the statement piece by piece

  • Our intelligence agencies - Subject
  • meet - Verb
  • with rebel groups - Object
  • who support our cause - Object modifier
  • (free trade, not democracy) - Side note which modifies "our cause"
  • all the time. - Parameters for verb.

Let us examine a similar sentence: Dick runs with his dog (who is white) on tuesdays. While tricky, after careful scrutiny you may notice that Dick runs with his dog who is white, and does not run with his dog because he is white. I believe this is where you became confused. You see, the side note is modifying the object of the sentence - which happens to be immediately previous to the side note - instead of magically changing the meaning of the entire sentence in ways I cannot comprehend.


Originally posted by qtiger
That does not reflect on the level of non-advisory support those groups recieve.
This second sentence clearly states that the actions performed during the meeting cannot be clearly determined given the above data, in direct contradiction to the meaning you and Houdini revealed from within my statement, which had been heretofore concealed from even myself.

Originally posted by DVPGSR
Oh so that's what Iraq and Al Quaida were doing...free trade agreements. And all this time I thought it was to coordinate, fund, and train terrorist activities. Silly me.

Hopefully this handy guide will help you properly read English in the future.
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