While those of us on the left side of the blogosphere have been obsessing about Iraq, Al Qaeda making a comeback and the latest Bush effort to turn Congress into nothing more than a debating society, I have to give credit to the right for focusing on what really matters: the incredible, fantastic and horrific story of a soldier deliberately shot by an allegedly traitorous violent antiwar leftist Islamocommiefascist scumbag on July 4th.
It really is a shame that their outrage du jour had no basis in reality whatsoever (h/t to the field negro):
Air Force Senior Airman Jonathan Schrieken was casually unpacking his car in front of his Willingboro house on the evening of July 4. A moment later, he was fighting for his life.
Out of nowhere, an attacker leveled a handgun at him and fired point blank into his chest, before turning the gun on himself and taking his own life. […]
The incident quickly became a cause celebre, fanned by a host of conservative and military bloggers across the country as well as national columnist Michelle Malkin, who claimed that Schrieken had been targeted by an antiwar zealot. […]
Within days of the incident, cyberspace was burning with criticism of the media for underplaying the story and failing to report the reason for the shooting.
Bloggers cited two notes left by Marren – in his car and at home – that reportedly blasted the government and military. The general content was revealed by Marren’s Trion, Ga., aunt in a story on the Web site PhillyBurbs.com. The aunt said he “wanted to make a statement” on Independence Day.
“Now, imagine the scenario flipped: What if a soldier had attempted to murder a peace activist over the holidays in order to ‘make a statement?’ ” wrote Malkin in a July 11 piece titled “When Peaceniks Attack, Journalists Snooze” on Townhall.com. “The [New York] Times would be holding a front-page vigil, and Katie Couric’s brow would be furrowed for a week.”
The Little Green Footballs … blog ran a July 10 posting that said “authorities and media are doing their best to downplay and cover up the shooter’s motivation.”
Another blog, baldilocks, (http://baldilocks.typepad.com/) said in a July 8 posting called “Dropping the Mask”: “I guess that ‘supporting the troops’ is starting to become difficult to pull off.”[…]
Burlington County and Willingboro authorities said yesterday they may never reveal the text of the Marren notes, but that its content did not support the picture presented by bloggers.
Investigators point out that the 22-year-old Schrieken did not know the gunman, was not in uniform at the time of the incident, and would not have been an obvious target for someone trying to kill a soldier.
They also said the text of Marren’s notes was indicative of someone with mental-health problems.
Of course, I fully understand the wingnuts rush to judgment in this case. After all, the only people who would even think of murdering a man dressed in civilian clothes in his own driveway are crazed anti-war peaceniks. Everyone knows that.
But seriously …
… how often do we have to go down this path with rightwing bloggers? They consistently fabricate or conflate stories to fit a pre-conceived storyline, one in which liberals are EVIL, RUTHLESS AMERICA HATERS WHO CONTROL THE MEDIA. Facts? Those pesky little things can’t be bothered with, not when they have a chance to bash the 70% of the fellow Americans who just want to get our troops out of Iraq. And it isn’t a surprise that Michelle Malkin, “Our Lady of the Ginned-up Controversy” would be leading the charge on this less than thinly sourced story about a mentally disturbed man who unfortunately had access to a gun. A man who decided to kill a total stranger, and then himself, for reasons that probably only he could understand.
But it is tragic that this poor airman who was shot has now, unintentionally, become entangled in the latest wave of internet generated bloviation and hatred from the right wing universe. He has become another victim of the right wing’s need to find martyrs for their cause, as well as evidence for their paranoid delusion that liberals and anti-war supporters hate and despise the troops. Of course, we just want to bring them home safely to their families from the clusterfuck that is our 5 year occupation of Iraq. The right only wants to keep them patrolling the mean streets and killing fields of Anbar, Baghdad, Tikrit, Tal Afar, etc. until God knows when.
So, naturally its the left that hates the troops and wants them dead. And if they have to, the wingnuts will just continue to make shit up to prove they’re — well — right. If their delusions didn’t have real world consequences for thousands of people, it would be laughable. But all it does is leave another bad taste in my mouth for people who are this irrational and obsessed with their own falsified version of “reality.”
You want outrage at a murder? How’s this: a US Marine ADMITS to having dragged a poor innocent 50-something year old Iraqi man out of his house and into the street, shot him, and placed a weapon next to him so as pretend that he had shot an “insurgent” – and a US Court Martial only lets him off with a bad conduct discharge.
“Thomas, of Madison, Ill., was among seven Marines and a Navy corpsman accused of snatching 52-year-old Hashim Ibrahim Awad from his house, marching him to a nearby ditch and shooting him after they botched an attempt to capture a suspected insurgent.
Prosecutors said squad members tried to cover up the killing by planting a shovel and AK-47 by Awad’s body to make it look like he was an insurgent planting a bomb….
Cpl. Trent Thomas was sentenced to a bad-conduct discharge and a reduction in rank to private. He could have received life in prison for his role in the April 2006 killing of the retired Iraqi policeman in the village of Hamdania.
“I’ve never been good at anything until I came to the Marine Corps,” said Thomas”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/20/AR2007072000425.html?hpid=topnews
I’d love to hear the panel of military judges explanation for that travesty of justice.
Actually, almost all the US soldiers who were implicated in similar atrocities have been let off with a light slap – if anything at all.
Now, how do you suppose this news plays in the Mideast?
An unidentified U.S. Marine Corps corporal is videotaped as he fires his weapon at a wounded, unarmed Iraqi lying on the floor of a gutted mosque in Fallujah, Nov. 13, 2004 – no court martial.
Two prisoners were found hanging from chains in their isolation cells in Bagram. They had been beaten over the course of five days; one of them was “pulpified,” according to the medical examiner. Medical experts said that one prisoner’s injuries were so severe that, if he had lived, both his legs would have required amputation. Willie Brand, their interrogator and prison guard, told correspondent Scott Pelley of 60 Minutes that what he did to them wasn’t torture, it was his training, authorized and supervised by his superiors. Charges against Brand – dropped. His superior was charged with dereliction of duty, but the charge was later dropped too.
18-year old Jamal Naseer, a member of the Afghan Army III Corps, was severely beaten over a span of at least two weeks, according to a report prepared for the Afghan attorney general. A witness described his battered corpse as being “green and black” with bruises. His cell mate was shot as he was pleading for his life. Anonymous US soldiers from 10-member Special Forces team of the Alabama National Guard, were “punished” with an “Administrative Reprimand”
7 British soldiers beat to death Nadhem Abdullah in the village of al-Ferkah, 60 miles north of Basra, southern Iraq, in May 2003. Charges dropped for lack of evidence attributable to an unwillingness to investigate the crime.
September 2003: nine Iraqi detainees were hooded, handcuffed, deprived of sleep and beaten for a 36-hour period by 7 British soldiers at a British Army barracks. One of the detained Afghans, a hotel receptionist named Baha Musa, died of multiple injuries. The judge ruled that prosecutors had produced insufficient evidence to bring charges against five of the seven soldiers, in part because the Iraqi civilians were hooded and could not physically identify the soldiers who beat them. The remaining two soldiers, Major Michael Peebles, 35, and Warrant Officer Mark Davies, were later ‘cleared’ of the charges too.
Zahir Zabti Zaher, executed by two shots to the head. Special Investigation Branch investigation repeatedly hampered by British military interference – no charges brought.
There is a long and ignoble list. We have no idea what the “contractors” are doing either.