[PonySoldier]

This gatekeeping is ridiculous. This is the same guy who unveiled the atrocities that occured during the My Lai massacre and at Abu Ghraib, both of which painted the US Gov/military in a terrible light.

This is an actual case of speaking truth to power. He clearly (and rightfully IMO) does not trust the US government and his "somewhat questionable" and recent work has continued that trend. Is it any surprise that the same institutions/people that continuously carry water for the government now rush to label him a conspiracy theorist?

[JumpCrisscross]

> the same guy who unveiled the atrocities that occured during the My Lai massacre and at Abu Ghraib, both of which painted the US Gov/military in a terrible light

Both were corroborated with evidence. I'm scanning this post for new evidence and coming up empty. The fact that American action was technically plausible has always been known.

One might twist Hersh claiming he has an anonymous source as new information. But that's the closest we get. On its own, that's not sufficient to advance the discussion in a meaningful way because it presents no new facts.

[woooooo]

He has the code name of the operation and a ton of alleged operational details, attributed to his sources in the Intel community.

[The_Colonel]

I, too, can make up a code name and operational details. Still no evidence.

[PonySoldier]

As someone else noted in another thread, Hersh's reputation and the source are absolutely evidence. What he hasn't provided is hard proof for the claims.

I can't find any proof whatsoever as to who actually did it from the western authorities claiming to investigate it either though. In fact, there's been little to no news or updates at all since the incident.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Hersh's reputation and the source are absolutely evidence

It’s a signal to pay attention to the issue. To keep an eye out for evidence. It’s not evidence per se.

[The_Colonel]

> Hersh's reputation

Not an evidence.

> the source

Remains anonymous. Also, not an evidence.

[hef19898]

The code name was "Gouda", it was established that it was the Swiss Vatican guard. Ementaler would have been too much into the face and the Vatican wanted to avoid problems with the Italians, so Parmesan was of the table.

[JTbane]

The name "Wallace" kept coming up, supposedly connected to MI6.

[hef19898]

And the support operation was called "Gromit"?

[twblalock]

That’s not good enough.

No level of reputation or historical track record should exempt anyone from the basic responsibility of providing evidence for claims they make.

[super256]

> No level of reputation or historical track record should exempt anyone from the basic responsibility of providing evidence for claims they make.

I'm not sure. Bloomberg and Reuters are two media outlets who regularly release information while only citing anonymous sources and not releasing any evidence.

Just posting proofster.png [1] doesn't undo America's long history of doing weird stuff to achieve its goals. Thinking about funding terrorism in Cuba, backdooring all electronic communication ever or saying that your President did not have a stroke.

Also, someone posted further down in the comments that the White House has a history of discrediting witnesses and questioning motives. [2] Interestingly enough, it appears to me that this tactic engages citizens to follow the ad hominem attacks of their policymakers, although they don't gain anything from doing so. Maybe this dynamic is even more interesting than the article itself because the causes of this crime are only for history books. America got what it wanted anyway, and nothing will change that.

[1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/proofster

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34709596

[mzs]

>If we cite anonymous sources in a story, say how these people are in a position to know the information, without compromising their identities. Any anonymously sourced story must be reviewed by senior managers.

p. 112; The Bloomberg Way: A Guide for Journalists; John Micklethwait, Paul Addison, Jennifer Sondag, Bill Grueskin; John Wiley & Sons; 2017 ed.

[Analemma_]

> Bloomberg and Reuters are two media outlets who regularly release information while only citing anonymous sources and not releasing any evidence.

It's bad when they do it too. That's what Bloomberg did with their Supermicro Chinese chip story and it was a disaster (and one for which they still haven't apologized or really even acknowledged).

Huge allegations require evidence. Your name is not good enough, no matter what you've exposed in that past.

[mrguyorama]

>Bloomberg

And that worked great on that "all server motherboards are compromised" article right?

[itsoktocry]

>That’s not good enough.

For you.

But maybe, just maybe, other people are willing to to accept claims backed by reputation.

I mean, do you have any idea how difficult some of these stories, throughout history, would be to bring to light with "hard evidence"? What would "hard evidence" even entail? A whistleblower?

[anigbrowl]

I don't think Hersh's reputation is evidence, as such, although it has some persuasive value.

However, evidence is not the only valid form of claim-making. Predictive power also has value: if someone can assert something unlikely without evidence, but with sufficient specificity that it describes a subsequent development very accurately, then it's fair to presume that person probably has insight into the issue.

So while I am somewhat skeptical of Hersh's claims, they're also detailed enough that corroboration could be sought for.

[threeseed]

> This gatekeeping is ridiculous

It is not gatekeeping to demand that extraordinary claims are backed up by evidence.

And there is an absence of evidence here.

[tanseydavid]

It is nothing but gatekeeping if you are requesting the removal of a post that many consider interesting (the only threshhold it needs to cross).

[SideburnsOfDoom]

> (the only threshhold it needs to cross).

Nope. The normal flagging rules are a sperate threshold.