Blogger John in Carolina has been pressing NY Times public editor Byron Calame for a retraction for false claims made by Lucian Truscott IV attacking the United States Military Academy at West Point and the Cadet Corpsin an Op-Ed, "The Not-So-Long Gray Line.''

In the Op-Ed (now hidden behind the Wall of Irrelevance known as Times Select) Truscott IV claims:

There was a time when the Army did not have a problem retaining young leaders - men like Dwight Eisenhower, George Patton, George Marshall, Omar Bradley and my grandfather, Lucian K. Truscott Jr. Having endured the horrors of World War I trenches, these men did not run headlong out of the Army in the 1920's and 30's when nobody wanted to think of the military, much less pay for it. They had made a pact with each other and with their country, and all sides were going to keep it.

There was only one problem with Truscott IV's claim as noted by John in Carolina:

Eisenhower, Bradley and Truscott never served overseas during WWI; Marshall was in France as a staff officer; and only Patton saw combat. I don't know of any historian who's ever claimed the five future generals made any sort of pact with each other.

Faced with this easily verifiable falsehood, you would think that the Public Editor would print a retraction.

You would be wrong. John is now asking for your advice.

I'd start by first reading both posts linked above, and then drop Byron Calame a note.

Lying should not be called "figurative language," even in the New York Times.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:17 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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According to USA Today, appropriately enough, today:

Bush's job approval rating sank to a record low 37%.

Interesting.

We're all well aware of the effects of Bush Derangement Syndrome (h/t: Instapundit), but the media's related and less-widely known Bush Poll Amnesia (BPA) shows no signs of abating.

BPA is indicated by the presentation of the various lows in Bush's approval rating during his presidency as occurring in a vacuum, independent of the other 42 preceding presidential administrations. For example, CNN's headline:

Poll: Bush approval mark at all-time low

This information is breathlessly presented, without providing any context as how Bush might relate to previous administrations, in such a way that the reader might just infer that George W. Bush is the Worst President Ever™.

But according, once again to USA Today on 10/17, that isn't true. As a matter of pure fact, Bush is still tied for have the "best/worst" numbers of any president since 1963:

Every president since 1963 has had approval ratings at one time or another that were lower than Bush's current rating. Those ratings include Lyndon Johnson's 35%, Richard Nixon's 24%, Gerald Ford's 37%, Jimmy Carter's 28%, Ronald Reagan's 35%, the elder George Bush's 29% and Bill Clinton's 37%.

Bush's numbers are on par with those put up by Clinton and Ford, slightly better than Reagan and Johnson's, and are far better than that of Nixon, G.H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, but you won't often find that mentioned in most poll-related articles due, apparently, to serious cases of Bush Poll Amnesia.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:47 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Update: The conclusions I drew in the post below are almost completely wrong. See why here.

British writer—I hesitate to credit him with the title journalist—Peter Popham, published an article the UK's Independent today titled "US forces 'used chemical weapons' during assault on city of Fallujah." In the article, Popham claimed, in part:

Powerful new evidence emerged yesterday that the United States dropped massive quantities of white phosphorus on the Iraqi city of Fallujah during the attack on the city in November 2004, killing insurgents and civilians with the appalling burns that are the signature of this weapon.

Ever since the assault, which went unreported by any Western journalists, rumours have swirled that the Americans used chemical weapons on the city.

Sadly, almost none of Popham's article is true. As I said in a comment this afternoon at Ezra Klein's blog (with my typos from the comments cleaned up, of course):

White phosphorous is not a chemical weapon.

White phosporous may been used in Fallujah consistent with its primary purpose, illumination of targets, but exactly zero evidence is presented for the claims that is was used widely and purposefully, as a weapon. In fact, the Independent provides no direct evidence at all.

And then there is simply the application of logic.

WP is not very useful in an urban, close quarters battle environment that the Fallujah battlespace was. High explosives are much more effective in most environments but especially in close quarters, and pose far less of a threat to your own troops who are constantly moving forward into the areas where these weapons would have been used. Do you really think Marines would have poured hundreds of rounds of such an agent into an area that they would then immediate occupy? The story shows a complete ignorance of tactics or even a shred of logic.

A corresponding point is readily available video from inside Fallujah that ALL of you have likely seen.

Does ANYONE remember Kevin Sites? Ignore the blowhard from the Independent that said no reporters were present. Kevin Sites was the embedded video-journalist that shot video of a Marine shooting a wounded insurgent inside a mosque as he followed them through Fallujah (as a side note, the Marine was cleared).

You will notice, as you watch the film, that NONE of the Marines had the chemical protective gear needed to survive in the WP-saturated environment that the Independent claims existed. The story is easily proven false by the video evidence provided by journalists who were there.

You have a simple choice: do you believe a story that provides no direct evidence, or do you trust your lying eyes?

Mr. Popham, meet Kevin Sites.

As I mention in the comment at Klien's blog, Sites leaped to stardom as one of the many embedded journalists reporting on Mr Popham's "unreported" assault on Fallujah, when he captured video of a Marine shooting a wounded Iraqi prisoner in the head inside a Fallujah mosque.

Does this image ring a bell?

Video of the shooting and other images captured by sites clearly show American Marines operating in Fallujah--when Popham claims "massive quantities of white phosphorus" were used, without any chemical protective gear in sight.

No chemical gloves or gas masks are present in another still from the infamous Fallujah mosque video:

Nor here:

Nor here:

As a matter of fact, a Google image search for "marines fallujah" shows that none of protective clothing needed to survive in an environment where "massive quantities of white phosphorus" was used can be found in any of the pictures from Fallujah.

Mr Popham and his editors at the Independent should learn to check facts before running such easily disproven propaganda, or better yet, perhaps they should consider a new line of work.

Other Coverage:
The Mudville Gazette
Ballon Juice
Outside the Beltway
QandO
Countercolumn

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:22 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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The News & Observer's Dennis Rogers whistles past the graveyard in his column Saturday, trying to convince himself that the newspaper industry is healthy. To make himself feel better about his future employment prospects, perhaps, he lashes out at the new kids in town:

If this is the brave new world, all I've got to say is, "Pshaw!" While there are responsible, well-researched and literate blogs doing a fine job at "people's journalism," there are plenty that are little more than some computer geek sitting in his mother's basement in his shorts and screaming for attention. It is difficult to know whom to believe and whom to laughingly ignore.

Newspapers are embracing new technology and the results are marvelous. But e-gizmos won't replace a rumpled reporter on the trail of a story. And when the piece is written and sleazy politicians are worried what their future holds, the answer will still be on the front steps by dawn's early light.

No newspapers? They wish.

Newspapers will indeed survive, as they have the resources to conduct original reporting that bloggers, in general, lack. Reporting may survive the onslaught of the new media, but not necessarily opinion columns.

Newspapers will have to trim the fat somewhere, however, and columnists are a dime a dozen... or as Times Select is proving, perhaps overpriced at that rate.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:33 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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