Okay. I updated the post below (full background there) and want to make a few more points.
Note this from Michelle Malkin, who refers to my post at DKos:
Two days ago, an e-mail about the rude treatment of Marines and soldiers returning from Iraq started making the rounds on the Internet. The brother of one of the mistreated troops who described the incident at Oakland Airport works on the Hill. The brother forwarded his family member’s e-mail around. The e-mail is real, contrary to the Daily Kos nut who dismissed it as “fake” without any evidence whatsoever (can you say p-r-o-j-e-c-t-i-o-n). I contacted the Navy chaplain who serves with the Marines to verify the e-mail on Friday. He confirmed.
You can read the whole thing here or here at The Corner from Michael Ledeen [Ledeen has altered his post - more in a bit].
Note that she says I dismissed the email as fake when I had updated the title with the [?] next to the word "fake" and within the post wrote, "[***And I amended the title, adding the "?". The email may be real - just misused.] - all within an hour of putting the post up. She had to have seen that, given that her post went up a day after mine. And within my post, before I updated, I wrote this:
Spitting on soldiers. Of course it's not the old Right Wing "Dems hate our troops - they spit on vets returning from Vietnam!" thing because, well, it's obviously an airport rule, or a military one...
Extra: And according to a commenter on this site, it's a noise rule at Oakland International Airport.
I had immediately acknowledged that the incident could have happened. The fraud I suspected was both the email and its use as "the Left hates the troops" propaganda. I quickly acknoweldged that the email could be "real" - but I may have been premature on that.
Malkin makes another mistake in her post. Look at that section again:
Two days ago, an e-mail about the rude treatment of Marines and soldiers returning from Iraq started making the rounds on the Internet. The brother of one of the mistreated troops who described the incident at Oakland Airport works on the Hill. The brother forwarded his family member’s e-mail around The e-mail is real, contrary to the Daily Kos nut who dismissed it as “fake” without any evidence whatsoever (can you say p-r-o-j-e-c-t-i-o-n). I contacted the Navy chaplain who serves with the Marines to verify the e-mail on Friday. He confirmed.
You can read the whole thing here or here at The Corner from Michael Ledeen.
The email was written, she puts forward, by one of the "mistreated troops," a Marine - whose brother works on the hill. She contacted the Navy chaplain "who serves with the Marines" and he confirmed the email. And then she links to Ledeen - whose post says the email was written by the Navy chaplain.
This is not adding up.
Back to my original question: Who wrote the email? A Marine, like Malkin and the person I originally linked to says? Or a chaplain, as Michael Ledeen said? [He has since taken the name of the chaplain, which was at the bottom of the email as if he had written it, off his post. (Easily proven by going to one or more of the many sites that linked to his original post.) He still says, however, that the email is from a "Marine chaplain." That in itself adds more confusion.]
Here's what really happened. It's just my guess, but here goes: The incident at Oakland International happened as stated. The reason for it was innocent, as explained at Malkin's place by the airport spokeswoman. Someone - perhaps the person on the Hill, maybe the brother of one of the Marines - heard about it and crafted the great idea to make this into "the Left hates the troops" propaganda. It's perfect! they must have thought - since Oakland is on the West Coast, and is really close to San Francisco! It'll look like the Lefties hate our returning troops!
And we'll add that line about "It felt like being spit on." It'll be perfect.
It's just a guess - but would you be surprised if it was really close to the truth?
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