Hunting The Muse

Defending Cheney - An Exploration Of Logic

Cheney's full quote:

Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again, that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind set if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and that we're not really at war. I think that would be a terrible mistake for us.

Computer logic paraphrase:

if ($wrong_choice) {
    $terrorist_attack = dangerously_likely;

    if ($terrorist_attack) {
        $wrong_attitude = dangerously_likely;
    }
    else {
        # (possible, but don't count on it)
    }
}
else {    # (right choice)
    $terrorist_attack = undefined;

    if ($terrorist_attack) {
        $right_attitude = true;
    }
}

Here's how Jesse reads it:

1.) You vote John Kerry into office.
2.) Because he's in office, we will be hit by a terrorist attack.

He's wrong.

Here's how Atrios reads it:

Define X="John Kerry Gets Elected."
Define Y="We Get Hit By Massive Terrorist Attack."
Define Z="Kerry wimps out and does nothing about it."

Cheney defenders want to claim that Cheney said "If (X and Y) then Z." But, what he said was "If X then (Y and Z)." He may have meant the former, but what he said was the latter.

If we make "dangerously_likely" just be "true", then actually, both "If (X and Y) then Z" and "If X then (Y and Z)" are correct, because Y is just set to "true". (Trust me, I'm a programmer.) What matters is X's else clause. So, his words are technically correct, but he seems to believe he's agreeing with Jesse, and he's not.

Basically, there's a big difference between:

• If Kerry gets elected, there will be a terrorist attack

and

• Because of Kerry being elected, there will be a terrorist attack

Cheney never argued causality. Causality is only proven if he argued that there wouldn't be a terrorist attack under Bush. He didn't argue that, and no one believes he would because it would be a politically stupid thing for him to explicitly say.

Did he intend to imply it? Like how they imply the 9/11 - Saddam connection, without ever actually saying it? Sure he did. His intentions aren't provable, but I would think that any reasonable person would see that he was deliberately being ambiguous to imply that - especially when you consider that "X" and "Y" were inserted into the speech, while only "Z" (wrong_attitude) was part of the standard stump speech.

But all these people that are trying to hold on to the point that Cheney explicitly said that a Kerry election invites more terrorism attacks, or makes them more likely, or would lead to a terrorist attack while Bush wouldn't... they're making themselves look bad. This isn't an argument to hold onto if you're trying to win a reasonable debate.

Kerry and Edwards might get mileage out of it, though. You can't count on the media to be reasonable. I don't feel bad for Cheney because it serves him right to have his words misrepresented like this. Especially because I believe it represents his dishonest intentions correctly.

By the way, the whole punctuation thing is a nonissue because a sentence that starts with "That" in that manner is seen as a clause to the previous sentences, anyway. The transcript that showed it as a new sentence was grammatically incorrect.

Posted by Curt at September 9, 2004 01:01 PM