In my earlier post 'Business Sucks' I wrote how I sometimes find it difficult to sit down with people and have a decent debate. One of the things that I find the hardest to deal with is when the argument gets changed regularly. I believe that people do this because the original argument does not have enough merit and needs support.

What I just stumbled upon is that there is a term for this, it is known as a Straw man Argument.

From wikipedia

"A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position. To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position."

The wikipedia article also has some good examples.

Full article Straw Man.