Friday, August 10, 2007

Krauthammer Reverts to Type

The New Republic seems not to have understood how the Kuwait “detail” undermines everything.

I initially wrote the following as a comment on Bloggingheads.tv.

"Beauchamp might be a liar." This is a provable assertion. It is not equivalent to "Beauchamp is a liar," or to "Everything Beauchamp says is true," neither of which is supportable. After weeks of beating this topic to death, nothing anybody has said changes the truth value of any of those assertions. And yet the attacks on Beauchamp - and TNR, do a simple search with just the terms TNR and Beauchamp and see how many hits you get that lead directly to slams on TNR, (we're ignoring the fact that that attacks on Foer are prima facie attacks on TNR) - have asserted and continue to assert that the truth of what he says has been incontrovertibly settled.

Those who are invested in proving his veracity, or lack of same, have not made their case. Simple assertions, rumors, innuendo, bad feelings, suppositions, extrapolations, or yelling really loudly do not constitute a case.

As I've said elsewhere, I have no opinion about the truth of his claims. I do have an opinion about whether assertions about the truth of his claims are true.

And that's the bloody point. Just because something "seems" false doesn't make it so. He's presented his case. TNR say they've vetted it. The Army says the opposite. He definitely got at least one detail, the importance of which can be argued from now until kingdom come, wrong. That summarizes just about everything substantive here.

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