(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
 . . . . . . . . . .



Josh Marshall on the Hospital and the bombing - questions arise on examination [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-10-18  

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has been looking at the Gaza Hospital story.

I have no ability to evaluate grainy videos or make sense of what different blast patterns look like. But I’ve spent several years developing lists of open source intelligence and forensics analysts who are consistently credible. You’ve seen some of this in the various Twitter lists I sometimes post here. Credible doesn’t mean always right, of course. By credible in this case I mean analysts who are highly knowledgeable in one relevant domain, use an empirical framework for analyzing videos, open source data, etc., and have a proven track record of the appropriate level of caution and skepticism in drawing conclusions.

Marshall is very clear that he is not an expert on explosives and weapons systems — but he does have a number of sources he has been following for some time he does trust on these matters. While it is impossible to be 100% certain of what happened, his sources have concluded this is the most likely explanation:

The explosion that occurred at a hospital in Gaza was most likely the result of a failed rocket launch coming from Gaza, not an Israeli air strike.

This is the conclusion they’ve reached after sifting through currently available information.

Marshall also brings up something else that needs more scrutiny:

One red flag last night is that there were almost instant, very large and very round fatality numbers. The two I saw circulating in global media, based on the accounts from the Gazan (Hamas) health ministry, was either 200-300 or 500 dead. It’s almost impossible to actually count numbers of dead and wounded that quickly. So at best those were estimates in a highly chaotic situation. But while most global media showed some caution about who was responsible, these death counts were reported more or less as fact. It’s possible they’ll prove to be accurate. But there’s significant skepticism about whether what’s visible in daylight squares with those immediate claims. I don’t know what numbers of fatalities are credible, just that credible analysts are skeptical of those original estimates.

Emphasis added

Marshall titled his piece “Fog of War, Rush to Judgment and the Day After” He ends it with this:

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/18/2200231/-Josh-Marshall-on-the-Hospital-and-the-bombing-questions-arise-on-examination?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/