To a certain extent, of course they can. The mainstream media of the United States and its allies routinely gets things wrong about targets of the State Department and CIA and doesn't bother to correct itself. If the Jan. 6 storming of the Capital had happened in Venezuela or Bolivia or Iran or China or Russia, it would have been described as pro-democracy protestors peacefully occupying the seat of government in order to address issues with the election. And the continued military presence in D.C. would be evidence of the repressiveness and brutality of America's regime. But it happened in the United States, so it was treated as the farcical putsch that it was.
Not a word of this addresses the validity of the testimony-- other than to say, "the US ignored X, so I can ignore Y".
Much like the people who thought Saddam Hussein had significant and threatening stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction but also, with ever so much principle, thought that war was a bad idea.
I'm trying to get the line of argument straight here. So, the fact that it
could be used by others to justify invasion is reason to... assume it's not happening in the first place? Is that right?
(Putting aside evidence, of course, since the WMDs weren't attested by first-hand leaked cables and numerous survivor testimonies).
I am interpreting these things with an amount of perspective and reasonable skepticism rather than credulously believing whatever the war propagandists and their bleating followers say I should believe.
Scepticism! That's a good one. You've dismissed, handwaved and denied from the start. One link mentioned the State Dept (not even as the basis for its primary use), so you refused to even
open the other five, though they were from various unaffiliated organisations. Not a peep on the first-hand sources. You've just responded "US State Dept" or "Adrian Zenz" in order to out-of-hand dismiss sources
that don't have anything to do with them. Nothing could be posted that wouldn't meet the same response.
There is no "reasonable scepticism" here; that involves weighing and evaluating evidence. This is kneejerk denial. And it's
tremendously credulous, repeating what the corporatists and state propagandists at outlets like the
Global Times would sell.