Blues, you of course are right (and I appreciate your input --it's made this an interesting thread, and the learning experience for me that I hoped it would).

What I meant by the statement you quoted was a weak reference to the old woodsman's adage that "all Birches are Beeches but not all Beeches are Birches", a phrase that has come to mean...

.....well, you get the drift. And the comparison I was making was that, in the same manner in which the red herring tries to confuse an issue by bringing up issues not related to the question -- the ad hominem that attacks a man's character rather than addressing the issue does much the same fuctinally speaking.

I promise not to write a book *BG*.