Quote:
Originally posted by Spanky
No, I am not dismissing them, I am just pointing out that statements made from anonymous sources should be treated with skepticism. I am not dismissing any inconvenient facts because I am not talking about facts; I am talking about unsubstantiated allegations.
You refer to my putative epistemology. I assume that you mean by putative that I have made some erroneous assumptions about how to discern the truth.
Do you really think that I am wrong when I say that statements made from anonymous sources should be treated with skepticism? Yes, it is true, only some information can be gleamed that way, but that does not mean that such information is reliable.
Do you really think that information reporters have alleged they have obtained from anonymous sources is always reliable? What possible argument can you make that such statements should not be viewed with extreme skepticism?
The problem with the current state of punditry is that these pundits pretend to know more than they do so they can give credibility to their statements. There is all sorts of information that is not available to the public but the pundits pretend it is there so they can sound like they know what they are talking about. How can you talk intelligently about the Bush administrations policies if you don't know what their intentions are and what they are thinking? The problem is you can't (at least a great deal of the time you can't), and so you can't talk intelligently about it, but the pundits pretend that is not the case. I worked on the Bush campaign in 2000 and the presses disregard of the truth was unbelievable. Every day I heard reporters stating what was going on in the Bush campaign, what Karl Rove was saying to so and so, what was being done, and eighty percent of it was not true. Yet is always stated as fact.
All sorts of assumption are made, treated as facts and then debated endlessly. Half the time the press and the pundits are debating about the pink elephant that doesn't exist. Yes there is a commercial reason they do this, but someone with a law school education should be able to see through the fantasy and understand what reliable information is and what unsubstantiated allegations are.
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OK. So I said to club,
- It's very easy to talk about "taking out" Iran's nuclear capability, but we don't really know where the facilities are. Except that some of them are deep underground, which is why the White House told the Pentagon to plan for the use of tactical nuclear weapons.
And you asked me for a cite, which I've given to you. There are two ways this story is coming out of the Pentagon -- official confirmation, which you seem to acknowledge isn't going to happen, and anonymous sources. Hersh has relied on the latter, and if you read his article, it's pretty clear who they are (generally) and which axe they're grinding. Plus, there are other stories out there about planning for use of tactical nukes against Iran (and other countries) going back a few years.
So my point remains: Iran's nuclear program will be hard to take out.
