"A red herring argument is an attempt to offer evidence to support one proposition by arguing for a different one entirely, or dodging the main argument by going off on a tangent."
More bollocks in other words and a 'media report' which I half expected to be put out into the public arena. We've had everything else claimed by the Pied Piper .... so this latest balderdash is more in the stream of operant conditioning material which has been bombarding our mind spaces since early August 2007 ...
Read on ... but first the nearest salt cellar should be gripped tightly in readiness to be used once more ....
A grim search for Madeleine McCann's body has been launched at an isolated reservoir. Teams of frogmen began scouring the remote Barragem do Arade amid claims the girl's body was dumped there last May. (Daily Mail Headline "Divers search for Madeleine's body in remote reservoir after underworld tip-off" - Tuesday 5th February 2008)
The private search - funded by a Portuguese lawyer - came as Portugal's most senior detective admitted that police had rushed into making Kate and Gerry McCann suspects in the case.
Alipio Ribeiro, the national director of the Policia Judiciaria, said his officers had acted with "a certain hastiness" and should have assessed the evidence again before naming the couple as official suspects. But he defended his men against claims they had acted under political pressure and had failed to investigate properly.
Last night there were calls for him to resign over the comments, as lawyer Marcos Aragao Correia revealed he was forced to fund the £1,200-a-day reservoir search himself because the police had refused.
Mr Correia, 32, ordered the search after underworld contacts told him Madeleine was raped, murdered and her body dumped within 48 hours of her disappearance on May 3. He said he believed the abductor killed the child, weighted down her body and then threw it from a pumping tower into the murky water beneath. His team of six divers have already found a five-metre length of knotted nylon cord, which has been handed in to Portuguese police for analysis. The remote reservoir is surrounded by dense woodland but a dirt track cuts through it to a bridge which links the water tower to the shore.
It's pretty grim reading really ... an underworld tip off. A lawyer coughing up the dough. A sensational new twist to what is now one of the great mysteries of modern time. Very similar to the 'blood on the wall' sensations .... it reads like the next chapter in an Agatha Christie crime novel. I will turn some Servants of the Light tarot later ... but I doubt I will uncover anything alarming. This appears to be more clouds ...
