Saturday, November 19, 2005

The Aaron Lee Wudrick beatdown: Part 2.5.


This isn't so much a whole new beatdown as a logical extension of the last one, since I wanted to make one more observation of the logical idiocy of Mr. Wudrick's asinine analogy.

In debating whether or not one can technically accuse George Bush of "lying," Mr. Wudrick has the nerve to compare the claims of the existence of WMDs to discussing whether or not it's raining outside. This analogy is so stupid, it's not clear whether it's worth disemboweling but, what the hell, I'll do it anyway.

Mr. Wudrick presents his idea of an analogy that involves whether or not it's raining outside, without even considering the consequences of giving out false information. In the case of the rain, it's not hard to imagine that being told incorrectly that it's raining is rarely going to have dire consequences. At worst, in the scenario I presented, someone might waste several minutes rushing outside to roll up their windows, only to find out that's it's entirely unnecessary.

If that person comes back down to chew you out, you can truthfully tell them that you really did believe it was raining based on the information you had, and that you're sorry, and that should be the end of it. A little inconvenience but, all in all, no big deal, it's over, forget it and move on.

The consequences of getting claims of WMDs wrong are, on the other hand, a little more serious, aren't they? It doesn't really cut it to launch a military invasion of another country, destroy its infrastructure, saturate its land with depleted uranium and kill tens of thousands of its civilians, then have to sheepishly admit later, "Well, heh heh, about those WMDs? Um ... funny story ... seems we can't find them. But we really thought they were here. I mean, that Ahmad guy who told us about them, he had an honest face. Gee, shit happens, I guess."

No, sorry, that doesn't work. You don't get to bomb another country back into the Stone Age on bogus accusations, then excuse yourself later by saying, "Oops, my bad." Sadly, though, that's exactly what Mr. Wudrick seems to be saying.

Unfortunately, sometimes "sorry" just doesn't make up for things, does it? And no, we are still so not done with Mr. Wudrick.

6 comments:

Danté said...

OMG YOU TOTALLY SHOT HIM DOWN!!! YOU ARE TEH 13337 DUDEZ!!!!


PWNED!!!!!!!!


.....sigh.....

CC said...

Will someone please keep the children away from the computer until we're done here?

eastern capitalist said...

You know CC, you hit the nail pretty good on this one...
If that person comes back down to chew you out, you can truthfully tell them that you really did believe it was raining based on the information you had, and that you're sorry, and that should be the end of it. A little inconvenience but, all in all, no big deal, it's over, forget it and move on.

The consequences of getting claims of WMDs wrong are, on the other hand, a little more serious, aren't they?


You are right the consequences of getting claims of WMDs wrong are pretty serious. What if Bush was totaly right, that the intel he had was as factual as he and his adminstration thought it was? Then what?

eastern capitalist said...

Oh and on another point, an OPP officer pulling someone over without and then finding drugs is a little less serious than say finding WMDs in a rouge nation, isn't it?

CC said...

eastern capitalist wrote:

Oh and on another point, an OPP officer pulling someone over without and then finding drugs is a little less serious than say finding WMDs in a rouge nation, isn't it?

I'm not sure what you're getting at. I wasn't trying to compare the severity of those two things.

I was explaining that, in neither case can you excuse your actions after the fact.

eastern capitalist said...

I was pointing out that getting the WMD question wrong has very large consequences, which sometimes means you use your judgement and go with some risk management.