Why I Will Await More Credible Evidence

Unfortunately, and unsurprisingly, Ed Brayton is willing also to give credence to the Post report about alleged “bait” tactics, without awaiting actual evidence. In his view, the Post report is a “solid prima facie case,” but what it actually is is a second-hand hearsay report from a party whose objectivity is seriously questionable: that is, a person accused of murder who is using this claim as a defense.

Of course the allegation could be true. Men do all sorts of horrible things in wartime. (Historically, this one would be relatively minor!) But I think one should hesitate to believe that the American Army has a tactic of just leaving things on sidewalks and shooting whoever picks them up. That is a serious accusation, and needs something more than a news reporter’s characterization and partial quotation of a document we have not been allowed to see, by parties who have good reason to say things that aren’t exactly true, to substantiate it. Even if we had those things, we should hear the other side (as well as the context!)

As to Brayton’s claim that my refusal immediately to believe the quoted testimony so awful—why is it worse to accuse this person of lying than to reflexively brush off the denials by Army generals as lies? Yes, of course generals can lie, but they can also tell the truth, and that seems to be difficult for some people to imagine.

Finally, with regard to the glee with which critics of the war greet these kinds of stories, I think it speaks for itself. There is a sort of person who strangely relishes such accusations to the degree that they will immediately believe them without awaiting indicia of credibility. Such people may not enjoy the substance of the story, but they so enjoy whacking what they think is a mole that they’ll bang away at anything that moves. Brayton himself is reflexive this way with regard to anyone associated with the Republican party. We won’t quickly forget how much he resisted the obvious fact that the CBS memos were fake, or how he believed the “Cheney says we’ll be attacked if we vote Democrat” story. Now, we all have our blind spots, but ideally they should cancel each other out. This “bait” story could very well be true, but we simply do not have enough information at this point to believe it, let alone jump on our favorite high horses and ride around flailing our indignation.