...is the number of people who react to a story like that with automatic belief or disbelief, based on their own personal predispositions.
It's sad, really. We have a news story that suggests the US lied and folks automatically assume that: a) it's automatically true, because the US always lies; or b) it's automatically false, because it makes the US look bad.
I know which side of the story I'd prefer to believe, but I do myself...and the truth...no good by evaluating the story only to prove or disprove my own personal preference.
In this case, if I base my judgement of the soldier's story on the premise that "the US always lies, so his story must be true" or if I base my judgement on the premise that "the soldier must be lying because it challenges my belief in the US government", I'm equally wrong because neither premise has anything to do with the situation being reported.
IS the soldier's story true? I don't know. Right now we have only his word against the wide variety of soldiers and governmental assurances to the contrary.
What I WANT the soldier to do is to provide something to back up his claim. Look at it this way, would we believe his claim if he had posted it, without clickies showing some kind of proof, here on UF? It doesn't automatically mean that he's lying and it doesn't automatically mean that he's telling the truth. We just don't have the information to know, for certain, one way or the other. |
