The Red Fort bombing
====================

Breaking news reached the broadcast in its closing minutes: a car bombing in New Delhi. John Kiriakou's response is a compact example of how he handles attribution before any evidence is available.

The report

The explosion occurred outside the Red Fort, a tourist attraction in New Delhi. Kiriakou relayed the early figures, "more than two dozen injured so far. I haven't seen any number on deaths", and gave his read of the event itself: "it's clearly a terrorist attack." The pictures and video from the scene that morning, he said, were grisly.

The attribution

Invited by Ted Rall to speculate, Kiriakou did, and prefaced it with the cost. "I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was Kashmiri separatist groups," he said, and immediately added: "Again, I'm going to get death threats from Pakistanis now, like I did two or three weeks ago, when I say that these groups carry out terrorist attacks."

He did not soften it. "Yeah, they carry out terrorist attacks because they're terrorist groups."

The definition

What followed is the reasoning behind the label, stated as a rule rather than a judgement about Kashmir. "Whatever your political point is, is irrelevant," Kiriakou said. "If you're out there murdering civilians, you're a terrorist."

Rall completed the definition, that terrorism is violence against civilians for political purposes, and Kiriakou confirmed it: "Political. That's the definition of terrorism." He then restated his guess in the form of a wager: "So yeah, I would bet this is probably Kashmiris."

Note on epistemic status

Kiriakou marks this as speculation throughout, "I wouldn't be at all surprised," "I would bet," "probably", offered minutes after the event and with no claim to information. What he states without hedging is the definitional point: that the merits of a cause do not bear on whether an organisation attacking civilians is a terrorist organisation.

The segment closed the broadcast; the hosts said they would follow the story the next day.

See also

- Ted Rall
- John Kiriakou
