He's a Monet, just take a couple of steps back.
Lord knows if I was held to a standard of 100% always right, else always wrong.
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If you had a Youtube channel and put out "facts" that you pulled out of your own ass, then we'd hold you to the same standard. There is and should be a standard for credibility that involves getting your data from somewhere other than where the sun don't shine. Ward Carroll is a arguably an expert in his field, so he should know better than most where that line is. However, he routinely reverts to assumptions and conjecture (which he presents as factual), which results in diminishing his credibility, and that of others with similar expertise. Being an expert doesn't give you license to just make shit up. Experts doing that is why people stop listening to experts.
Now there are people who will believe that missile didn't have a warhead on it, and refuse to be told otherwise, because "Ward Carroll said," blah blah blah. Is it really all that important? No, but this is exactly how the really important stuff gets twisted, and the next thing you know alien lizards are controlling us, the MMR vaccine causes autism, and the Free Masons killed JFK.
I actually think this Chinese balloon drama has been handled reasonably well from a counter-intelligence, risk-management, and kinetic perspective. But that doesn't stop the Internet Keyboard Warriors from armchair quarterbacking how they would have gotten too close for missiles, switched to guns, and brought it down before it ever crossed the first Aleutian Island chain because, by God, everyone in Washington is asleep at the wheel.
