Straw man fallacy

A straw man fallacy (or straw man argument) is a fallacy which occurs by first incorrectly attributing an argument to someone, disproving this argument, then claiming that the person was wrong. Straw man arguments are often found in politics.

Straw man arguments can sometimes be hard to detect, because a valid statement may be used in a distorted fashion. For example:

• Person A believes that a military program should be cut
• Person B argues that since Person A wants to cut military funding, he wants to leave the country defenseless to attack

This is fallacious reasoning, because there is no way to know why person A believes what he does, and Person B has used one reason which suits his own purpose. For example, it's quite possible that Person A wants to cut the program because he wants to change the funding to something which he thinks does a better job at defending the country.