A meme takes hold!

Cnn jumps on the bandwagon.

"Grim Milestone"

So, Does this mean we are winning in Iraq, or losing in Afghanistan?



What is truly funny about this, is that the writer(s) of this headline article has apparently not noticed the comparative irony.

No, its a new "grim milestone". This is actually a great example of how the press views, and propagandises, the war.

No success is mentioned as, you know, an actual success, and every negative is played as hard as it can be played. To the point where it becomes quite obvious that they simply cannot be trusted as a source of information on this, and other subjects. And this is why they are dying (ht insty - read the insty articlet too!).

Luckily for us, there is Micheal Totten, Micheal Yon, and countless sources of real news, closer to the actual events, and with less of a hidden agenda.

Misreporting Method # 11 is the most obvious here.

The unavoidable "Damning But"

What you see here, people, is an admission that they were wrong about Iraq all along. And that is as close as you will ever get, of seeing these professional liars come to admitting any truth that does not fit in their worldview.

Oh , how painful good news for the Iraqi people has become for the press.


Methods 5, 11, 13, 14. of modern leftist press propaganda.

Your news about Iraq, interpreted for you.

The Source:

Lets see...

"Bush to Mark 5 Years of War in Iraq"

Ok. Is this like an Anniversary type thingy then?

"WASHINGTON (AP) - Five years after launching the U.S. invasion of Iraq, President Bush is making some of his most expansive claims of success in the fighting there. Bush said last year's troop buildup has turned Iraq around and produced "the first large-scale Arab uprising against Osama bin Laden."

You see, President Bush "Makes Claims" and what he claims is "put in parenthesis"

Massive anti-war demonstrations were planned in downtown Washington to mark Wednesday's anniversary of the war, which has claimed the lives of nearly 4,000 U.S. troops. Across the river at the Pentagon, Bush was to give a speech to warn that backsliding in recent progress fueled by the increase of 30,000 troops he ordered more than a year ago cannot be allowed.

Ah There are "Massive" "anti -war demonstrations" planned against, and a mention of US deaths, and "warning" about "backsliding."

"The challenge in the period ahead is to consolidate the gains we have made and seal the extremists' defeat," he said in excerpts the White House released Tuesday night. "We have learned through hard experience what happens when we pull our forces back too fast - the terrorists and extremists step in, fill the vacuum, establish safe havens and use them to spread chaos and carnage."

Bush added: "The successes we are seeing in Iraq are undeniable, yet some in Washington still call for retreat."

I sense a "Damning but" coming up.

Democrats took a different view.

"On this grim milestone, it is worth remembering how we got into this situation, and thinking about how best we can get out," said Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich. "The tasks that remain in Iraq - to bring an end to sectarian conflict, to devise a way to share political power and to create a functioning government that is capable of providing for the needs of the Iraqi people - are tasks that only the Iraqis can complete."

DOH! How hard was that to spot, heh?


The rest of the article is as bad - So Ill summarise the methods used, lemme know if you spot any!

Here is a list of methods used by leftist propagandists to "educate" you.

In this Article I detect Numbers 1, 5, 6, 10, 11, 13, and 17 coming up for the "massive planned protests.

Sigh.....

An example of "Headline does not belong to picture" This method is designed to strengthen certain Memes - in this case "All bad news from the Middle East is because of the Iraq war"



The worst part of this headline contains all kinds of subtle press malfeasance, to wit-

1. "Study" - this takes the onus of proof away from the reporter, who now can say he/she was "just" reporting. Yeah, like the bullshit Lancet study? Remember, only BAD news about Iraq makes the news headlines, and only negative studies.
   
2. That is a file photo. It has NOTHING to do with the story. If this were Bosnia, the picture would have been of a mass grave, none of which have been found in Iraq, if I were to get my news only from your headlines. Or at least on any front page of ABC, MSNBC, CBS, BBC, with near the frequency as this tripe.
3. Worst of all, the headline pretends that the idiot journalists know better how to conduct operations and logistics for our troops. Go cover a candlelight vigil, or a cat in the tree story, please. You are not needed in Iraq, we won, despite you.
   

Yetyetbutyetbut. Yetbutdidnotjointheclapping

I'l highlight, so you don't have to go through the pain

Read the whole, sorry, "unbiased" piece here.



WASHINGTON — Facing an unstable economy and an unfinished war, President Bush used his final State of the Union address Monday night to call for quick passage of his tax rebate package, patience in Iraq and a modest concluding agenda that includes $300 million in scholarship money for low-income children in struggling schools.

With Senate Democrats already jockeying to amend the stimulus package that the administration negotiated with the House last week, Mr. Bush, in his address, urged lawmakers to resist the temptation to “load up the bill” with other provisions. To do so, he warned, “would delay or derail it, and neither option is acceptable.”

Yet Mr. Bush devoted relatively little of his 53 minute speech to the economy, the issue that is the top concern of voters during this election year. He spent far more time talking about the issue that has been his own primary concern, Iraq.

Mr. Bush made the case that his troop buildup had “achieved results few of us could have imagined just one year ago,” and reminded Americans that in coming months, 20,000 troops will have come home. Yet he avoided any timetable for further withdrawal and, if anything, seemed to be preparing the country for a far longer-term stay in Iraq, warning that a precipitous withdrawal could lead to a backslide in security.

“Members of Congress,” Mr. Bush said, “having come so far and achieved so much, we must not allow this to happen.”

The White House had promised that the speech would look forward, not back. Facing the realities of a final year in office, with little time to win legislation from a Congress controlled by Democrats, Mr. Bush used the address to emphasize his power to block actions that he opposes. He vowed to veto any tax increases or legislative earmarks that were not voted on by the full Congress.

But the speech, interrupted nearly 70 times by applause, was also infused with a sense of summing up, as Mr. Bush opened by remarking that “our country has been tested in ways none of us could imagine” since he delivered his first address to Congress, seven years ago.

“We have faced hard decisions about peace and war, rising competition in the world economy, and the health and welfare of our citizens,” Mr. Bush said. “These issues call for vigorous debate, and I think it’s fair to say we’ve answered that call. Yet history will record that amid our differences, we acted with purpose.”

Democrats responded by saying that Mr. Bush had offered “little more than the status quo,” in the words of the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, and the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California.

Yet the party’s official response was not criticism but a call for unity, delivered by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas. Ms. Sebelius urged the president to build on the bipartisanship of the stimulus package — a sign that with the fall elections just 10 months away, Democrats are aware they must show voters they can work across the aisle.

“There is a chance, Mr. President, in the next 357 days, to get real results and give the American people renewed optimism that their challenges are the top priority,” she said.

Seven years have passed since Mr. Bush arrived in Washington, fresh from the Texas governor’s mansion, with a sweeping domestic agenda and a grand promise to be a “uniter, not a divider.” But with the nation divided over the war, and many Americans already looking past Mr. Bush to the 2008 presidential race, he arrived in the House chamber on Monday night a politician with much less ambitious plans.

Mr. Bush is grayer now than he was then, reflecting the strain of his time in office. And he is realistic, White House aides say, about what he might accomplish in his 51 weeks left.

In one poignant sign that his time is short, Mr. Bush’s twin daughters, Jenna and Barbara, were seated in the first lady’s box. It was the first time they had attended one of their father’s State of the Union addresses.

Looking ahead, on domestic affairs, Mr. Bush called on Congress to reauthorize his signature education bill, No Child Left Behind, and to pass pending trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea. He asked lawmakers to make his tax cuts permanent, and implored them to renew legislation permitting intelligence officials to eavesdrop on the communications of terrorism suspects and to provide legal immunity to phone companies that have helped in the wiretapping efforts.

Yet even as Mr. Bush issued that call, lawmakers were at an impasse over the bill Monday night, as the Senate rejected two measures that would have forced votes on competing proposals — a plan backed by the White House and a short-term effort by Democrats to extend by a month the existing eavesdropping law, which is set to expire on Friday.

And though there is little to no chance that the Democratic Congress will tackle Social Security or illegal immigration, his two major domestic priorities, Mr. Bush could not resist urging them to do so. His counselor, Ed Gillespie, said Mr. Bush saw that as his presidential duty.

“The president understands that nominees on both parties are going to have their own proposals and ideas on these fronts,” Mr. Gillespie said, previewing the speech. “That’s where we are in the cycle of things.”

On foreign affairs, the speech was as notable for what it did not mention as for what it did. Mr. Bush left out any mention of North Korea; he had hoped that by now North Korea would have disclosed all of its nuclear programs, giving the Bush administration a foreign policy achievement. But the North missed the Dec. 31 deadline for disclosure.

On Iran, the third nation, beyond Iraq and North Korea, to make up Mr. Bush’s “axis of evil,” the president repeated an oft-stated message, addressing his words directly to the Iranian people and their leaders. To the leaders, he said, “Come clean about your nuclear intentions and past actions, stop your oppression at home and cease your support for terror abroad.”

On Iraq, Mr. Bush expressed confidence that “Al Qaeda” would be defeated, even though American military officials have emphasized that the Sunni Arab insurgency remains resilient.

Mr. Bush has often said he intended to “sprint to the finish.” Still, it was clear in his speech Monday night that the sprinting would involve relatively small steps. Beyond the scholarship money for low-income children, he offered just a handful of truly new initiatives.

The president promised to use his veto pen to curtail by 50 percent the pet projects lawmakers sometimes insert into spending bills without full Congressional approval.

Mr. Bush called on Congress to pass legislation that allows members of the military to transfer their G.I. Bill education benefits to spouses and children. And he promised to reduce or eliminate 151 government programs that he described as “wasteful or bloated,” to save $18 billion.

But many of the initiatives Mr. Bush announced were not new. He called on Congress to amend the tax code to make private health insurance more affordable, a plan he unveiled in his State of the Union address last year. He urged lawmakers to devote $30 billion over the next five years to combating the global AIDS epidemic, a proposal he announced in the Rose Garden in May. He asked Congress to pass a measure to ban human cloning, recycling a proposal from his 2006 State of the Union address.

One area where Mr. Bush hopes to find bipartisan consensus is in the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, one of his few bipartisan achievements. But even that may be difficult.

“Six years ago,” the president said, “we came together to pass the No Child Left Behind Act, and today no one can deny its results.”

The remark brought applause from Republicans. But as he spoke, his main Democratic partner on the bill, Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, did not join in the clapping.

Nope, no bias here. Yet, there is! But.

MSM Methods of (mis)reporting Politics

Claim you are “unbiased”, by not letting your readers know how you vote.. Then………

1. Criticize your political opponent Whenever You Can, and never give credit when due. Even when it is painfully obvious that you were wrong, and the Wingnut was right. Caveat: the MSM is 90% Leftist.
2. Set Standards for Conservatives, of absolute perfection, or better than perfect,. Examples are - Casualtyless wars, Low Oil prices, admission to mistakes when asked by hostile reporters, No tripping, ever! etc,) for Conservatives, Corollary to rule# 2: Expect Nothing of liberals except to get, and stay elected. Report on any transgressions of the expected perfection, as abject failure
3. Play “Name That Party” IE, When Conservatives are involved in scandal, be sure to mention their party affiliation. Many times. Do not mention Democrats party affiliation, if at all possible. If necessary, do it at the end of a long article that makes many mentions of unrelated Republican transgressions.
4. When a scandal is possible about a Rethuglican, FRONTPAGE! When it turns out to be nothing? - Corrections page a18, under the escort services ads.
5. Use The Damning But technique whenever good news for conservatives cannot be avoided.
6. When good news for Bush – for example the “Anbar Awakening” is unavoidable to mention, Find an “expert” that disagrees, and give him most of the article space.
7. Treat all Military Staff with complete circumspection. Quote : A military spokesman “claimed” Or “defended” the latest move/decision in trouble-ridden XXXX” Exception, the “expert who disagrees.” The “Expert’s” word is taken as is, no qualifier.
8. Treat All Military members on the line as victims of bad policy, as long as that policy is set by a Republican. – Exception, the “expert who disagrees.”
9. If the policy is set by a Democrat, They are “Acceptable casualties of war” See #2, “standard of perfection”
10. Count Bodies – of friendly/allied/USA soldiers. If 3 friendlies die when taking a mountain stronghold, but 150 Enemy soldiers were killed, Treat enemy soldier deaths as “a military spokesman claimed”, then go to tearful relatives of your own countries casualties, and ask them how they feel, on camera. “Damning but” technique helpful. Point out that “Area Was Unsafe!”
11. Ignore progress, if progress may be good for conservatives. It is after all, relative to another bad thing somewhere. If no factoids can be found or manufactured (above willing suspension of disbelief level), do a negative poll. Zogby, Gallup are good go-to pollsters for this
12. When progress is undeniable, find a victim of the progress. Every silver lining has a cloud! ”Fewer Deaths in Iraq Bad for Cemetery workers” Real headline.
13. Nagging problems: “More electricity, but stifling heat continues” or “Some Progress, problems remain”. A Variation of the “perfection” theme (#2) almost always used as, or in conjunction with “damning but” technique.
14. Negative word use without substantiation or perspective – “Costly Move” “Unpopular War” “Lowest Approval rating” “Most casualties between 12:00 and 12:01pm, In Iraq, ever”
15. UN/NATO/FRENCH approval is necessary for wars started by Republicans. Democrats, Not so much. See Kosovo.
16. The Enemy of your enemy (example, Ahmadenijad vs George W Bush) – is your friend, and deserves the benefit of the doubt. Also, really easy, non-confrontational interviews.
17. Small protests that agree with your worldview can be made to look important with lots of close up shots of the most interesting poster held by a normal looking /angry individual. NEVER publish pictures of freaks in marches, unless…… They are conservatives. Then, that is all that you publish. Remember to use “fringe, far-right, extreme, and fundamentalist” often in describing them. The rightist freaks, at least. Use pictures taken from inside the crowd, outward, to make a conservative protest look smaller. Or take more pictures of the leftist counter-protestors than you do of the actual marchers. Make sure their version gets more space, quotes, and better pictures.
18. At protests, Ignore left-on-right violence. The opposite applies to the opposite event.
19. At leftist protests, treat police who are trying to protect the tax-paying public and their property as oppressors of free speech and the right to express views.
20. At rightist protests, treat police who are protecting leftist counter protesters from abusive, bad words, as victims of vicious brown shirt-like fascists – (and the leftists as victims of violent conservative thugs) unless a leftist gets arrested.
21. Arrests at protests: - if leftists, list their complaints and that of their attorneys. If conservatives, write about their transgressions, find lefty with complaint about events.
22. Use “file photos” to obscure your lack of information from any given event. File photos are very seldom questioned, so, for example, all “file photos” of Iraq will show destruction or death, or soldiers pointing guns at children. File photos of anointed politicians will reflect them in all their holy glory.
23. The Memory Hole: If you do not acknowledge a salient fact or event that you were wrong about, ever again, that fact or event may be treated as if it never existed, or took place.
    

24. Define the political center to the left. That makes Hillary Clinton a “moderate”, Hugo Chaves slightly leftist, And journalists the center.
25. Use Bigspeak. Decimate. Surge. Atrocity. Global. International. Billions. Deficit. Tons. Used when describing something bad, BIG bad, cause by wasteful Americans and their Idiot-in-chief.
26. Newwordyness. I-anything. Webinar. Organic. Bio-crap. Nano. Blog. Truthiness. Use when trying to sound “hip”. Remember to type on Mac. Imac. I’m a Mac. Under an Ipod. On the internet. I-blogging!
27. The “Bad gun” or “Devil made him do it” argument. : Whenever a terrorist or Criminal kills, or convinces himself to kill, write that the “Iraq war radicalized” him, or “Easy access to guns/explosives/knives/drugs/high heels by gangs” caused the death-murder-bombing/fashion crime to occur. Never write that the act was willful on the part of the perpetrator.
28. Lie internationally, retract locally. International wire services will disseminate news far and wide, the retraction will be made at their site only.

Summary of all of the above - Anything Bad that happens, Anything at all, will get tied to, or mentioned as a part of The GWB Administration. Anything good will be ascribed to dumb luck - if it cannot be ignored.

You would think...

ABC news could find a bad picture of this guy



Quoth the newsfilter:

"The terror group has also been campaigning to reach a broader audience, announcing that its No. 2 figure, Ayman al-Zawahri, would respond to journalists' questions sent over the Internet. The deadline for the queries was Jan. 16."

Lets see If ABC asks him whether he "ever admits to any mistakes"

UPDATED - Your news, as interpreted by ABC (re-interpreted by me)

The Senate is poised to take up a $516 billion measure to fund 14 Cabinet agencies and troops in Afghanistan, with President Bush likely to sign the measure if his GOP allies can add up to $40 billion for the war in Iraq.

Why do they need to do that? No explanation.

Senate leaders would like to wrap up debate Tuesday, though GOP conservatives may balk, unhappy with spending above Bush's budget and a secretive process that produced a 1,482-page bill with almost 9,000 pet projects sought by lawmakers.

Why is it above Bush's Budget? Ah! a "secretive process" (unexplained), "pet projects", and anonomynous "lawmakers" Lets try this, ABC - use the words "pork", and "Democrats"

Despite opposition from conservative hard-liners like Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Jim DeMint, R-S.C., the stage is set for a year-end budget deal ending a monthslong battle between the White House and congressional Democrats over domestic spending.

And what do these two guys oppose? PORK. ABC sees fit to name their resistance, without naming waht they resist. Once again, what they do NOT report will tell you more than what they do!

Now here comes the biggest weasel-paragraph I've seen all week:

Democrats have succeeded in smoothing the rough edges of Bush's February budget plan, which sought below-inflation increases for domestic programs other than military base construction and contained numerous cutbacks and program eliminations.

Smoothing the edges, ey? Below inflation increases for domestic programs! And "numerous" "other things"! Wow - Now we know what is going on. Thank you, Oh journalist who reports things to us, so we may know what is going on!

Actually, Im confused. WTF? Let's read on....

But Democrats were able to fill in most of the cuts by shifting money from the Pentagon and foreign aid budgets, adding "emergency" funding above Bush's budget "cap" and adding future-year funding for federal education programs.

Uh-oh. PORK.

The bill passed the House late Monday after an unusual legislative two-step aimed at easing the bill's movement through a gauntlet of anti-war Democrats and Republicans unhappy with the measure's price tag and the process that produced it.

Again - thanks for the explanation. POOOORK!

The House first voted 253-154 to approve the omnibus spending bill funding domestic agency budgets and foreign aid; they then voted 206-201 to add $31 billion for troops in Afghanistan to the measure and sent the combined spending package to the Senate.

Huh? What?

Democrats are generally far more supportive of military operations in Afghanistan than they are of the unpopular war in Iraq.

Aaaah! the "unpopular" war. Yeah. OK. Made unpopular by a relentless propagandist effort on the part of ..... You.

Republicans generally opposed the omnibus measure, arguing it's unfair to provide money for troops in Afghanistan but not Iraq. They also opposed $13 billion in spending above Bush's "top line" request for the one-third of the budget passed each year by Congress.

Quote please? Damned Republicans. All they do is "argue". Like naughty children.

And there you have it! The Senate is poised, Democrats smoothed the rough edges of Bush's plan by filling in cuts below inflation increase and numerous cutbacks and eliminations, Republicans argued, Unpopular war in Iraq.

Oh, and Article contents contradicts headline.

Soundbite file transfer complete. You are what you read peeps, don't eat gum off the ground!

UPDATE:

Here is what really happened.

In Iraq - For every solution, there is a problem!

On the Frontpage Headliner of this article"

"Return of about 4.5 million refugees who fled sectarian conflict poses complex challenge (emphasis mine) for Iraqi leaders, U.S. military, diplomats and aid workers."

Really? A sign that the war is being won is riddled with problems? Nay! We thought the war could be won in a day, with no casualties, no mistakes, no loss of equipment, and an Immediate resolution, like um, well, no war ever.

Just the one you expect from a Republican.

BAGHDAD - When the Iraqi government last month invited home the 1.4 million refugees who had fled this war-ravaged country for Syria -- and said it would send buses to pick them up -- the United Nations and the U.S. military reacted with horror.

They did? "horror", ey! No less than horror! You have pictures of their horrified faces? No? I think you made up the horror bit. Although, the UN having noticed they could do something productive might, in my mind's eye, produce a horrified expression.

Now do yourself a favor, and click on the "Basra handover" link next to the bus pic, and scroll down to paragraph 9.

"But (emphasis mine) U.S. officials worry that a power vacuum could heighten the influence of Iran and threaten land routes used by the Americans to bring ammunition, food and other supplies from Kuwait to troops to the north."

We have a winner! The Damning But. These guys cannot help themselves.

.

"Damning but" of the week

Wow! looks like good news, huh?



Aaaahh. Here it is. The "Damning But". In the form of the "poll" on the right.

And - the last heading in the article -

"Threat remains
While the level of violence has reduced, the threat has certainly not gone away. "

HEH, that news was so good they needed TWO damning buts!.

When they print bad news regarding Iraq, it is bad news only, and front page. When they find good news, they have to line it's fringes with this crap. The BBC is not a good source for proper, unfiltered news.

Please note, this article does not come from a front page.

When allegations are true.

The Money Shot: "Ali Mokhtare, who is still employed by the State Department, was investigated in 2005 after a female Halliburton/KBR employee said he sexually assaulted her at the company-run camp in Basra, Iraq."

(Emphasis mine)

A Google search for abc, Juanita Broddrick, or Juanita Hickey (Broaddrick) comes up with nothing palpable. Because that was "just an allegation", and was treated as such. And O'l Billy boy was the anointed one.

This is how the game is played!

Anything, anything at all, that can be negatively tied to the Iraq war and ANY of its participants be they our troops, contractors, Republicans, suppliers, or ordinary Iraqis, for that matter, will be played up all the time, incessantly, without fail.

Any success will be Ignored. ABC is a Leftist Propaganda outfit.

Afore Foer is Finished - More Hits on TNR

Roger L Simon Shoots.... and Scores! "The larger issue involved, however, is fact-checking in general. It is the linchpin on which mainstream media bases its superiority over blogs and other new online media and has considerable economic ramifications: whom readers trust equals whom advertisers will ultimately invest in. All of this is fluid."

Michelle Rakes The Anti-US Foer's Decks. The Heading says it all, and the content is devestating. With Juicy "look at what he did NOT mention linkage and images

John Tabin gets his hooks in for the boarding "When critics first started raising red flags about the Baghdad Diarist articles, there were charges that TNR was advancing an anti-military agenda. Such charges were somewhat unfair in July. They're perfectly fair now."

H/t Instapundit, as Usual

A-Fisking A-Foer you resign, Frankie.

TNR CAVES TO REALITY

For months, our magazine has been subject to accusations that stories we published by an American soldier then serving in Iraq were fabricated.

Imagine that! Accusations! For such Sterling work, all you get are... accusations.

When these accusations first arose, we promised our readers a full account of our investigation.

Then we stalled, prevaricated, and just plain old hoped-it-would-just-go-away.

We spent the last four-and-a-half months re-reporting his stories.

Re-reporting? Were you not supposed to be verifying? Were the UNVERIFIED parts of the story not the problem?

These are our findings.

When Michael Goldfarb, a blogger for The Weekly Standard, left me a message on a Tuesday afternoon in mid-July, I didn't know him or his byline. And I certainly didn't anticipate that his message would become the starting point for a controversy.

Yes. His message was the "starting point". Not the fiction you sold as fact, but his message is the problem. I think I discern a pattern of blame in this here first paragraph.

A day earlier, The New Republic had published a piece titled "Shock Troops." It appeared on the magazine's back page, the "Diarist" slot, which is reserved for short first-person meditations. "Shock Troops" bore the byline Scott Thomas, which we identified as a pseudonym for a soldier then serving in Iraq. Thomas described how war distorts moral judgments. To illustrate his point, he narrated three disturbing anecdotes. In one, he and his comrades cracked vulgar jokes about a woman with a scarred face while she sat in close proximity. In another, a soldier paraded around with the fragment of an exhumed skull on his head. A final vignette described a driver of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle who took pride in running over dogs.

Because Life in Iraq is disturbingly similar to a 80's era Vietnam movie.

Goldfarb said he had been contacted by tipsters who thought these scenarios sounded concocted by a writer with an overactive imagination--or perhaps by a total fabulist. He asked for evidence that might answer these complaints, "any details that would reassure that this isn't fiction." Among other things, he wanted the name of the base where the author had mocked the disfigured woman.

Hmm - rather specific questions - Could you name all of them in one list? Or is being concise not really a part of this here exercise?

The same afternoon, we contacted the author, asking permission to answer Goldfarb's queries. We thought we could provide details that might answer these concerns without revealing the author's identity and violating the compact we formed when granting him a pseudonym. He agreed.

I told Goldfarb that the insults to the woman had occurred at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Falcon. A day later, Goldfarb sent a link to an item on the Standard blog. It quoted an anonymous source who said the story sounded like a collection of the "This is no bullshit ... stories soldiers like to tell." Goldfarb called on the military blogosphere to do "some digging" and for "individual soldiers and veterans to come forward with relevant information."

Embarrassing huh? When you verify something, you ask the same guy who may have told you the lie in the first place, while Mr. Goldfarb goes and does what is called "independent verification" That is, he checks the information as close to the actual event or place of the event as he can, and independantly of the author, whose work is suspect.

By the weekend, the Standard's editor, William Kristol, published an editorial that, without evidence, pronounced the Diarist an open-and-shut case.

Yeah. No evidence. All he had was your and "Scott Thomas’s" word, which are not to be questioned at ALL, for fear of , umm , becoming a starting point in a controversy? You are kinda right he had no evidence. He had no evidence that what you guys printed was true. And right now, here today, it turns out - neither do you.

Kristol wrote, "But what is revealing about this mistake is that the editors must have wanted to suspend their disbelief in tales of gross misconduct by American troops. How else could they have published such a farrago of dubious tales? Having turned against a war that some of them supported, the left is now turning against the troops they claim still to support."

An then it goes on. And on. And on.

And.... on.

So, in the interests of brevity, and your and my time, Ill selectively quote and fisk as without regurgitating the entire bore fest Mr. Foer coughed up.

Here goes more!

"Naturally we wanted to learn more about the dog-hunting and the skull--although, in hindsight, the genesis of these anecdotes in such a nonchalant aside should have provoked greater suspicion. Beauchamp revised the piece, and we sanded down the prose. A month after he submitted the first draft, after several revisions, it entered into galleys."

Here we learn that TNR's Editors had a LOT of time to look at this piece. They had time to "sand the prose" and make "several revisions" Nowhere in this process, it seems, did anyone question the actual events being desccribed.

Facing the difficulties of verifying the piece, but wanting to ensure its plausibility before publication, we sent the piece to a correspondent for a major newspaper who had spent many tours embedded in Iraq. He had heard accounts of soldiers killing dogs with Bradleys.

They fact checked this piece, about the agile-as-dogs armored vehicle with another MSM Journalist? And he had "heard accounts" Tell us. who is this man, and what is his opinion of the Iraq war?

Reeve also asked a National Guard medic who had served in Iraq if he had seen burn victims in chow halls. He replied, "[N]ot many ... but a couple."

Could you actually find any yourself? Scratch that - If you cannot find the one that is mentioned in the story, your story is horseshit. And She must also verify the incident - OK?

I almost fell for the clever little lowering of standards there - fact checking now seems to have become "probability searching" "If it is at all possible, it HAS to be true!

He also added details to his accounts. The woman Beauchamp said he had mocked loomed large within his circle of friends. They called her "Crypt Keeper" or "Mandrake's Bride."

Um, Yay. Did you consider the the embellisher might be embellishing? Some more?

The bones, meanwhile, had been uncovered while filling sandbags in a small section of his combat outpost. (I received a photo of Beauchamp holding a bone in one hand while obscuring the name on his uniform with the other.)

No pic, no believe. Print the picture.

He provided us with the names of the soldier who wore the skull and the driver who ran over dogs. And he solicited corroborating accounts from five other soldiers.

Provide these names, Please.

Soldier A: "While digging we came across several bones and a guy named [name withheld] said he was part Indian and danced around the bones to show he was peaceful and he did a proper burial procedure."

Names, please.

The nature of these contacts wasn't ideal: Beauchamp was soliciting his own witnesses. But, once Beauchamp established the initial contact, we tried to communicate with these soldiers independently. We always considered the possibility that they were lying to cover for their friend, but there was no way for us to know that for certain, and we couldn't dismiss what they told us. They were not only Beauchamp's buddies, but, in some instances, the only witnesses to the events described.

Wait. You only thought of that afterward, right? Not before?

Beauchamp instant-messaged us that officers had "made people sign sworn statements saying that brads don't intentionally hit dogs and that no mass grave was found" at his combat outpost--"in fact, that no human remains at all were found there."

Beauchamp said he was under enormous stress.

Yeah, that happens to Liars when they get caught out.

"[I] wanted to get out of the room alive," he told us.

Because the US army Executes those who refuse to sign? On the spot?

He signed statements but tried to phrase them carefully. "[I] think i worded it pretty well enough to buy me some more time without contradicting myself."

"buy me some more time" The Meme is set!

Earlier that morning, we had received an e-mail from a soldier in Beauchamp's unit who had mentioned seeing the disfigured woman in Kuwait

Names please.

A pattern began. Beauchamp's behavior was sometimes suspicious--promising evidence that never arrived--but so was the Army's. Beauchamp had corroboration, but his confusion over Iraq and Kuwait was troubling. And we were running out of leads; one of the few remaining was a former member of Beauchamp's unit named Kristopher Kiple.

A Name! Who remembers Beauchamp's Fantasy! And might have read the fantasy, Like everyone involved most likely did. Did he ask you for a job?

You see, Mr Foer, by now anything you say gets questioned. Nothing less than FULL transcripts of ALL your conversations with EVERYONE about this will do. But we won’t be getting them from you, now will we?

"Without new evidence to be gleaned, we began to lay out the evidence we had assembled. It wasn't just the testimonials from the soldiers in his unit. Among others, we had called a forensic anthropologist and a spokesman for the manufacturer of Bradley Fighting Vehicles. Nothing in our conversations with them had dissuaded us of the plausibility of Beauchamp's pieces."

Nothing....had dissuaded us of the plausibility...." This is really the centerpiece, the method of your defense. The allegations you and your correspondent had made, had only to be "plausible" to be true. All you had to verify, is whether things were "possible" Not whether they actually had occurred.

For an enlightening clarification on how this works, your "fact checking" with the Bradley expert went almost to the letter, down the road of "could a Bradley possibly kill a dog?" You asked as general question as you could, got the most slight whiff of a possibility, and called it "verification". Yet, you question every one else's integrity.

You are a Laughingstock. Resign. Or Hell, Stay, and give us more fodder to laugh at.

No Conservitive Scandal or Bomb in Iraq Today

We Can tell, Becaus CNN leads with aplane crash in a foreign country. Mainly, I think, because there are good pics...



MSNBC dredges up an old favorite, Aids. Complete with "I am a victim - healthcare for all! - socialist goodness.




They could not resist a Bad pic (upnostril), and an Accusation against Rudy. This is Sourced from the NYT, Long time ally and supporter of "America's Mayor". Read some of these, then ask thyself - they are accusing Rudy of futzing the numbers?



ABC got Nuthin!

The story that is missing on your front page.

Iraq. From the best journalist alive today. A rebel with a cause, and a clue. Also, a set of Brass ones. Go on - send him some. You know you wanna.

There are more of his kind, here, here and here.

In contrast: Anything that goes wrong in the (US) military gets frontpaged at CNN.

MSNBC cannot let go of scary toys blah blah.

ABC meme of the moment, The veterans are homeless! Complete with annoying, un-turn-offable sound. They sure are "Big Picture" guys, those ABC professionals