How To Tell When You're Losing A Debate

PaddyMac started out with an foolish post trying to justify the use of waterboarding, claiming it wasn't really torture. Later, he puts up another post, quoting a couple of other bloggers expressing their opinions, as validation for his own incorrect thinking.

This morning, Mike Mathias, at Pundit Nation, confronts PaddyMac's erroneous assertions regarding the whole waterboarding issue.

This afternoon, we see PaddyMac trying to make a retort to Mr. Mathias's arguments. The key word her is trying. PaddyMac tries to say that Mr. Mathias is losing his argument by making "an allusion" comparing PaddyMac to a Nazi. This is the first sign that PaddyMac is losing, when he makes false statements to distract from the true argument. What Mr. Mathias did say was

Am I saying that McIlheran is Eichmann? No, but I think he needs to examine which other countries have allowed torture and determine if they have governments he thinks the US wants to be associated with historically.

As one can see, Mr. Mathias actually goes out of his way to make sure that no one, except for PaddyMac apparently, would make that inference.

And if one would look at the wording Paddy uses in his first post, compared to his rebuttal to Mr. Mathias, an observant reader would notice that PaddyMac has gone from defending waterboarding as justified to calling it "debatable". Backpedalling is another sign of losing your argument.

But all that aside, I find it sad that PaddyMac, and many others on the right, try to justify the use of torture by citing the violence and atrocities committed by the terrorists. I don't think I would want to use a terrorist as a role model for my behaviors or the actions of my country, but then again, I know that I am above that. Apparently they don't.

UPDATE: Mike Mathias (or in PaddyMacese, Matthias) corrects PaddyMac's false assertions, and notes Paddy's own little tribute to adding to the Nazi rhetoric.