All Hank, all the time.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Among others, Seymour Hersh has reported about this in the New Yorker.

Any cites that are not from reporters that claimed to get their information from allegations made by "anonymous sources"?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
Any cites that are not from reporters that claimed to get their information from allegations made by "anonymous sources"?

You mean, has the Pentagon officially announced that it's planning includes planning for the use of tactical nuclear weapons?

Here's the Hersh article. There are other reports going back a few years about the planning for the use of tactical nuclear weapons in a variety of countries, including Iran, but Hersh's is specific to the war planning for Iran. In addition to planning, we've been running missions simulating the dropping of nukes for the Iranians to watch on their radar.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
You mean, has the Pentagon officially announced that it's planning includes planning for the use of tactical nuclear weapons?

No I meant exactly what I said: Do you have any cites that are not from reporters that claimed to get their information from allegations made by "anonymous sources"?

Clearly you do not have any. As a lawyer, I can't believe you refer to information gleaned from double hearsay from an unknown source as "fact". Allegations made from anonymous sources, are not facts, just allegations. They are not verifiable and there is just as much incentive for these reporters to lie (or for their sources to lie) as there is for the government to lie. For the reporters the more shocking the story the more it sells and the more ancillary press it gets. Therefore the reporter has a strong incentive to exaggerate or to shade things to be more sensationalistic. And the temptation is doubly strong because no one can check on their statements because no one has access to their sources. And often these anonymous sources have axes to grind or have agendas other than the truth. And what provides a better place to spread disinformation than a place where no one can ascertain who is spreading it. So more often than not information from anonymous sources is not reliable.

I am not saying that there is not a place for anonymous stories. They serve an important purpose. But it is important to always keep in mind that any information produced by a reporter from an "anonymous source" is highly suspect. To refer to it as "fact" is either naive or disingenuous.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
No I meant exactly what I said: Do you have any cites that are not from reporters that claimed to get their information from allegations made by "anonymous sources"?

Clearly you do not have any. As a lawyer, I can't believe you refer to information gleaned from double hearsay from an unknown source as "fact". Allegations made from anonymous sources, are not facts, just allegations. They are not verifiable and there is just as much incentive for these reporters to lie (or for their sources to lie) as there is for the government to lie. For the reporters the more shocking the story the more it sells and the more ancillary press it gets. Therefore the reporter has a strong incentive to exaggerate or to shade things to be more sensationalistic. And the temptation is doubly strong because no one can check on their statements because no one has access to their sources. And often these anonymous sources have axes to grind or have agendas other than the truth. And what provides a better place to spread disinformation than a place where no one can ascertain who is spreading it. So more often than not information from anonymous sources is not reliable.

I am not saying that there is not a place for anonymous stories. They serve an important purpose. But it is important to always keep in mind that any information produced by a reporter from an "anonymous source" is highly suspect. To refer to it as "fact" is either naive or disingenuous.

Your putative epistemology, if not calculated for the purposes, conveniently allows you to dismiss all sorts of inconvenient facts. How nice.

Certain sorts of things will only be reported through anonymous sources. Categorically disregarding such reporting is tantamount to closing your eyes, ears, and nose to the world, and feeling your way around blindly.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
I am not saying that there is not a place for anonymous stories.

Here you are. Because you otherwise have refused to engage.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Your putative epistemology, if not calculated for the purposes, conveniently allows you to dismiss all sorts of inconvenient facts. How nice.

Certain sorts of things will only be reported through anonymous sources. Categorically disregarding such reporting is tantamount to closing your eyes, ears, and nose to the world, and feeling your way around blindly.

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.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

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.

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.

[sgtclub]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
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.

I understand the conventional wisdom on this. However, I think there is a 50/50 chance that the Israelis can take it out or at least set it back some years. I base this on nothing other than my belief that Israel simply doesn' have the margin of error to permit Iran to go nuclear.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sgtclub
I understand the conventional wisdom on this. However, I think there is a 50/50 chance that the Israelis can take it out or at least set it back some years. I base this on nothing other than my belief that Israel simply doesn' have the margin of error to permit Iran to go nuclear.

This strikes me as a example of what Matt Yglesias called The Green Lantern Theory Of Geopolitics (links omitted):

• Up at Cato Unbound you can find Reuel Marc Gerecht's latest argument for bombing Iran. I think I've covered the policy arguments on this score extensively elsewhere, so let me just note something in particular about Gerecht's essay. Like a lot of conservative writing on foreign affairs it puts a huge amount of weight on things like will, resolve, and perceptions of strength and weakness. It's a view of things that reminds me of nothing so much as the Green Lantern comics, which I enjoy a great deal but regard as a poor guide to national security policy.
  
  As you may know, the Green Lantern Corps is a sort of interstellar peacekeeping force set up by the Guardians of Oa to maintain the peace and defend justice. It recruits members from all sorts of different species and equips them with the most powerful weapon in the universe, the power ring.
  
  The ring is a bit goofy. Basically, it lets its bearer generate streams of green energy that can take on all kinds of shapes. The important point is that, when fully charged what the ring can do is limited only by the stipulation that it create green stuff and by the user's combination of will and imagination. Consequently, the main criterion for becoming a Green Lantern is that you need to be a person capable of "overcoming fear" which allows you to unleash the ring's full capacities. It used to be the case that the rings wouldn't function against yellow objects, but this is now understood to be a consequence of the "Parallax fear anomaly" which, along with all the ring's other limits, can be overcome with sufficient willpower.
  
  Suffice it to say that I think all this makes an okay premise for a comic book. But a lot of people seem to think that American military might is like one of these power rings. They seem to think that, roughly speaking, we can accomplish absolutely anything in the world through the application of sufficient military force. The only thing limiting us is a lack of willpower.
  
  What's more, this theory can't be empirically demonstrated to be wrong. Things that you or I might take as demonstrating the limited utility of military power to accomplish certain kinds of things are, instead, taken as evidence of lack of will. Thus we see that problems in Iraq and Afghanistan aren't reasons to avoid new military ventures, but reasons why we must embark upon them: "Add a failure in Iran to a failure in Iraq to a failure in Afghanistan, and we could supercharge Islamic radicalism in a way never before seen. The widespread and lethal impression of American weakness under the Clinton administration, which did so much to energize bin Ladenism in the 1990s, could look like the glory years of American power compared to what the Bush administration may leave in its wake."
  
  I don't even know what else to say about this business. It's just a bizarre way of looking at the world. The wreakage that the Bush administration is leaving in its wake is a direct consequence of this will-o-centric view of the world and Gerecht takes it as a reason to deploy more willpower.

If the Israelis want to take out Iran's nuclear program badly enough, then they will.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by Spanky As a lawyer, I can't believe you refer to information gleaned from double hearsay from an unknown source as "fact". Allegations made from anonymous sources, are not facts, just allegations. They are not verifiable and there is just as much incentive for these reporters to lie (or for their sources to lie) as there is for the government to lie.

Now, if he had input from a known low-life named "Curveball," that would be reliable.

[flare up]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Your putative epistemology, if not calculated for the purposes, conveniently allows you to dismiss all sorts of inconvenient facts. How nice.

Certain sorts of things will only be reported through anonymous sources. Categorically disregarding such reporting is tantamount to closing your eyes, ears, and nose to the world, and feeling your way around blindly.

didnt Janet Cooke use anonymous sources? Also, didnt Jayson Blair use anonymous sources? What paper did he write for? Categorically disregarding that the liberal media conspiracy's reporting is filled with half-truths, biased slants, and outright treasonously fabricated lies is tantamount to closing your eyes, ears, and nose to the world, and allowing yourself to be led around like a senseless puppet.

[Diane_Keaton]

Originally posted by taxwonk
The terrorists use their tactics because they have nothing else. And they learned their tactics from men like Ariel Sharon and his predecessors, who used the same tactics against the British.

People like you are hopeless. A crazy Muslim could be stabbing a 4 year old Israeli child to death and you'd blame Ariel Sharon and other Jews (for "teaching" them those "tactics"). No matter what goes down...it will always be Israel's fault. Those poor terrorists - gee "they have nothing else" to use but those terrorist "tactics." Poor things.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by flare up
didnt Janet Cooke use anonymous sources? Also, didnt Jayson Blair use anonymous sources? What paper did he write for? Categorically disregarding that the liberal media conspiracy's reporting is filled with half-truths, biased slants, and outright treasonously fabricated lies is tantamount to closing your eyes, ears, and nose to the world, and allowing yourself to be led around like a senseless puppet.

Jayson Blair's problem was that he didn't use sources at all.

• Willard: They told me . . . that your methods were unsound.
  
  Kurtz: Are my methods unsound?
  
  Willard: I don't see any method at all, sir.

[Anntila the Hun]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Jayson Blair's problem was that he didn't use sources at all.

• Willard: They told me . . . that your methods were unsound.
  
  Kurtz: Are my methods unsound?
  
  Willard: I don't see any method at all, sir.

Your patently absurd response proves your traitorous sympathies. Blair, Cooke and Hersch are all members of the same liberal media elite; the same anti-American amorality and blatant disregard for government-approved facts is ascribed to by all. "Anonymous sources"? That's leftist code for the al-Qaeda propaganda machine! Thank G-d for the red, white and blue Fox News network and the heroic work of patriots like Drudge and Ben Domenech, who tirelessly defend the USA against the tirades of falsehoods and innuendo endlessly permeated by the craven terrorist sympathizers in the mainstream media! It is a proven fact that the Fourth Estate has become a fifth column.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Diane_Keaton
People like you are hopeless. A crazy Muslim could be stabbing a 4 year old Israeli child to death and you'd blame Ariel Sharon and other Jews (for "teaching" them those "tactics"). No matter what goes down...it will always be Israel's fault. Those poor terrorists - gee "they have nothing else" to use but those terrorist "tactics." Poor things.

You are so fucking stupid, it's a wonderment to me you haven't yet drowned walking around with your mouth open in the rain, like a young turkey.