• What am I your secretary? I wrote what they said in this thread. Some dumbo comes along and says “citation needed.”

      If that resonated with you, perhaps you also have not followed this story closely enough to know what you’re talking about? Try adding the words “state department” or “intelligence briefing” to your Google search string. If you had followed the story closely enough, you’d already know what sources I was referencing in my initial post. Maybe you could disagree with their responses, but saying “citation needed” to the basic facts of the story instantly reveals you as unserious.

      • @LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net
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        55 months ago

        If you refuse to take the time to cite your claims, then you will be rightly dismissed. That is the nature of written discourse. It is not worth our time to attempt to research all of the inane claims made by foolish people online. Most are false or misleading and I’d rather not waste my time on a wild goose chase.

        I actually thought your initial point was reasonable and maybe you could have persuaded me and others by offering some good reading. Instead you’ve just acted condescending and rude. I don’t think this is a good faith contribution to the discussion here.

        • I don’t see it that way. I made a cogent argument and presented the basic facts of the story to support my opinion. It’s as if I had said “IMO the war in Gaza is really terrible, 30,000 people are dead.” And someone said “citation needed.” Obviously, that person hasn’t done their homework and aren’t seriously participating.

          The person I was originally replying to said several things that were patently false and I corrected them with a short summary of the actual facts. The one fact that I got wrong was that it was 12 UNWRA employees who directly participated in the attack, and not 13 as I originally wrote from memory.

          The person didn’t disagree with my opinion of the facts, or suggest it was inadequat support; just said “citation needed,” which is the same as calling me a liar, as if I had just made up the facts. How is somebody going to sit here and talk about what the American government knew and did not know if they were not familiar with the statements of the Secretary of State of foreign affairs leadership on the hill? It’s asinine.

          • @LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net
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            15 months ago

            I agree that it was a snarky way to ask for sources but I still think we should all make an effort to support the factual claims we make online. Otherwise it just devolves into endless back and forth contradictory statements that don’t achieve anything. I get that you feel you accurately summarized the facts, but again, there’s no way for us to verify that without comparing it to the original source. Lots of people take advantage by this by distorting a mostly true idea into something unrecognizable, and this can happen by accident as well due to faults of memory and personal biases.