As I mentioned earlier, the Canadian wankersphere is all aflutter over Mark Steyn's opinion piece in today's Globe, seeing it as perhaps a harbinger of things to come. Sadly, if it is, what it means is that we can look forward to even more eye-rolling mathematical illiteracy and dishonesty.
Steyn tries to paint a happy face on the current situation in Iraq with the subtitle, "Three years on, Iraq's glass is seven-ninths full," and expands on that thusly:
But in Iraq today the glass is seven-ninths full. That's to say, in 14 out of 18 provinces life is better than it's been in recent memory.
Steyn, like many other deluded/dishonest Bush apologists, sure is keen on this whole "14 out of 18 provinces" thing. Sure sounds impressive, until you take a closer look at those excluded four provinces:
So: the four provinces containing the cities of Baghdad, Fallujah, Mosul, and Tikrit. That's sort of like an American election in which California, New York, Illinois, and Ohio couldn't vote. In fact, it's worse: those four provinces contain about 50% of Iraq's population.
Ooooooh ... that's kind of an important detail, wouldn't you think? Of course, it's amusing to think that folks like Steyn who refuse to take into account the population distribution in Iraq when bellowing the good news are naturally the same ones who are absolutely incensed by the fact that, come election time in Canada, Ontario has such a disproportionate effect in terms of votes because of its population compared to the other smaller provinces.
Mark Steyn: Intellectually dishonest or mathematically illiterate? We report, you decide.
BY THE WAY, if you have an urge to see Steyn get bitch-slapped around the parking lot, you can start here.
3 comments:
And Steyn also fails to quantify what "life is better" means.
However, all of that is irrelevant, because fundamentally - like all BushCo apologists I've seen to date - Steyn is using an 'ends justifies the means' argument.
An assassin could just as easily argue that the world is better off without person X - and may be somewhat correct in saying it. But that doesn't justify the assassin's actions in terminating the victim does it?
If my memory is correct, I believe that Steyn also claims that the invasion has saved 100,000 Iraqi lives.
Hunh?
"Mark Steyn: Intellectually dishonest or mathematically illiterate?"
Well, obviously both. And he's ugly and his mother dresses him funny. Face it, Marky Steyn has cooties.
Sorry, just trying to argue at Steyn's level.
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