In the night of 14 July, young Yassin was sleeping on the land in his garden because it was hot and there was still no electricity to cool the home. At 3 in the morning, an American armoured vehicle ran right over an exterior fence surrounding the garden and then ran right over Yassin. Some of Yassin's neighbors tried to help Yassin as he lay there, but the U.S. soldiers would not let them near. U.S. soldiers then immediately shot him dead. The armoured vehicle continued on and then broke through the house where Yassin had lived and destroyed it and then his family's car.

Can you tell me your source on this particular story?

A much more reliable one than the source you rely upon to believe that Bush didn't lie.

All right, I understand your need to reiterate your view that Bush lied, but instead of pussyfooting around my question, maybe you can answer it.

Bart,
First let me ask: Do you think that news reports from Iraq that are first reviewed and approved by the US military are credible?

Malaclypse:
"First let me ask: Do you think that news reports from Iraq that are first reviewed and approved by the US military are credible?"

Typical. Let me ask: What fucking difference does it make what some eponymous righty thinks about reports vetted by the US military vis-a-vis your claim? Wave your arms much?


Pearcy:
Mal,

How do you miss these points all the time?

It would certainly matter to Bart if my source was an official military one and he regarded such a source as credible. That was the reason I asked HIM the question. Maybe YOU would have a different standard for credibility than he would.


Malaclypse:
Brain Trust,

Notice the part where I say, "vis-a-vis your claim"? See that? What I meant by that, which should be fairly obvious, is that it is generally considered responsible (I know - how passe!) to cite one's sources. This standard obtains irrespective of the audience. See? Not complicated.

In other words, why not just come out and cite the source? Why needle bart? It matters, in the empirical sense, not one wit what bart thinks of the source - the citation serves ALL audiences, not just the ones who would agree with your sentiments.


Pearcy:
Mal,

Your comments are irrelevant to my question to Bart. Regardless of whether it's responsible to cite the source, I still asked Bart a legitimate question. Bart was afraid to answer my question because he realized that answering it might commit himself to accept the legitimacy of my source once I disclosed it. See? Not complicated.


Malaclypse:
Self-appointed “Exposer”: "Your comments are irrelevant to my question to Bart."

You're quite a dancer aren't you. Actually, no: your ploy is quite transparent. A more accurate description of the situation would be to say,

"Your question to Bart is irrelevant to the issue of citing sources for inflammatory and dubious claims. In fact, it is likely a diversion from the fact that you either don’t have a source or are unwilling to share it because it will be dismissed by all but your sycophants.”

I’m also impressed by your willingness to delete posts/comments in which you get a drubbing. Quite sporting! Is it with that same devotion to integrity that you practice law?


Pearcy:
Mal, if you thought that this original post had "inflammatory and dubious claims," then you should have been pleased when I saved as a draft (which removed it from the blog). But then you complained and accused me of "deleting" it.

Why don't you make up your mind? Apparently, you'll complain whether it's up or whether it's down!

Some posts simply become dated. And sometimes I save old ones, for example, that got very few comments, or none at all, as drafts.

In any event, if I deleted posts just because someone criticized me, then almost all of them would be gone. So that's never my motive.


Malaclypse:
Uh huh. Keep on dancin'. Meanwhile, more than a month has gone by during which you have yet to reveal the source for your story.

When I left comments (in another post) to the effect that this post had been "poofed" out of existence and left a link to Google's cached image of it, you promptly deleted my comment and voile - the post reappears. Couple this with the fact that you've dithered and dissembled for a month while two people have asked for a source on this story, and most sane people would have difficultly concluding that you are being anything other than perfidious. (Never mind that another post – in the comments section of which I provide a thorough and hermetic case for the probability that you are actually an AI construct created by Noam Chomsky and Gore Vidal – also disappeared.)

See here, Pearcy: I don’t give a good god damn what you do with your blog. Display as much or as little intellectual honesty and rigor as you wish. Craft flimsy stories about how you “save as drafts” those posts in which you are demonstrated to be fast and loose with ethics. I care not. I am simply pointing out, as any ombudsman would do with any journo at any paper in the country, that without sourcing, your claims can be considered little more than spurious.