The 2013 Syrian gas attack

Urban can’t even direct Hitchens to a report or an article or anything at all to back up his claim that “evidence” exists to prove his claim — something you’d imagine would be easy for an editor at a major BBC news program to do.

You want to do this the right way?

We can go look up the evidence/argument for it ourselves. We don’t need fringe talking heads and guys like Hitchens (who you remember skewers Chomsky).

Actually research the thing, for real, without a predisposed outcome. It’s what we did in the lead-up to the Iraq war. We could actually examine the entire spectrum of what was out there and make real judgments based on actually knowing the whole story.

I thought what Hitchens did was disinqenuous (as usual). It is possible to pull up what the europeans and americans (and russians) were saying at the time.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/04/world/syria-us-evidence-chemical-weapons-attack/

President Barack Obama says the United States has “high confidence” that Syria used chemical weapons — the strongest position the U.S. can take short of confirmation.

Britain, France, and Germany say their intelligence backs up the same conclusion.

wv wrote:

I have no problem with that approach, zn. But i dont just ‘dismiss’ any of those voices in those two links. They raise questions for me. I dont adopt their views but they do raise questions.

The second link was not one involving Hitchens and Urban. It was more interesting, I thought.

w
v

Of course I dismiss them!

They repeat the Russian take on this with nothing on their side but smarmy innuendo.

They do not genuinely cover the range of views and evidence.

Back when, I reacted the same way to rightie claims that Hussein was in league with al qaeda.

Just don’t take that personally. It’s just what my instincts see in all this.

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