More fraud from the appeaseniks
Via Instapundit and Gateway Pundit — another “anti-war vet” is exposed as –yup– an exaggerator and a liar.
Polipundit has the details and many links. Here is a direct link to the St Louis Post-Dispatch article that finally damned Massey. Massey did serve with the 3/7 Marines in Operation Iraqi Freedom 1.
The lede:
For more than a year, former Marine Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey has been telling anybody who will listen about the atrocities that he and other Marines committed in Iraq.
In scores of newspaper, magazine and broadcast stories, at a Canadian immigration hearing and in numerous speeches across the country, Massey has told how he and other Marines recklessly, sometimes intentionally, killed dozens of innocent Iraqi civilians.
Among his claims:
Marines fired on and killed peaceful Iraqi protesters.
Americans shot a 4-year-old Iraqi girl in the head.
A tractor-trailer was filled with the bodies of civilian men, women and children killed by American artillery.
Massey’s claims have gained him celebrity. Last month, Massey’s book, “Kill, Kill, Kill,” was released in France. His allegations have been reported in nationwide publications such as Vanity Fair and USA Today, as well as numerous broadcast reports. Earlier this year, he joined the anti-war bus tour of Cindy Sheehan, and he’s spoken at Cornell and Syracuse universities, among others.
News organizations worldwide published or broadcast Massey’s claims without any corroboration and in most cases without investigation. Outside of the Marines, almost no one has seriously questioned whether Massey, a 12-year veteran who was honorably discharged, was telling the truth.
He wasn’t.
Each of his claims is either demonstrably false or exaggerated - according to his fellow Marines, Massey’s own admissions, and the five journalists who were embedded with Massey’s unit, including a reporter and photographer from the Post-Dispatch and reporters from The Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal.
Read the entire sad report.
And this St Louis Post-Dispatch rumination on why Massey got away with it. Bottom line: lack of fact checking.
In four or five years the same thing will happen with the entire “Bush/Blair lied” meme and Joe Wilson’s “trip to Niger.”
In my humble opinion the main stream media ran these lies because they wanted them to be true. The media wants to believe this type of story. It reinforces their bias against America. The main stream media relishes the fact that disgruntled or crazy people can become a celebrity and make money by peddling this stuff. The only good thing from this travesty is that it “innoculates” us from main stream media lies .
Comment by rich — 11/6/2005 @ 5:56 pm
He fit the template - you know, Mai Lai (sp?) a go-go. He had to be true, didn’t you see “Platoon?”
Comment by Mikey — 11/6/2005 @ 8:30 pm
American Scum — the 2004 remake (Re-post) I originally wrote the post below last December. Finally, one of the major papers has seen the light about Jimmy Massey. Michelle Malkin has more. Possibly more important than the Massey expose’ itself is reporter Ron Harris’s question: Why did
Trackback by Small Town Veteran — 11/6/2005 @ 9:31 pm
I think there may even be a story within a story regarding how journalist Ron Harris was able to get such honest answers and confessions of lying on the record from a previously unreliable source. Mr. Harris certainly deserves our gratitude and recognition for professional investigating and reporting. The MSM could use a lot more reporters like him if they want to regain some of their credibility.
Comment by E. T. — 11/7/2005 @ 10:58 am
Why am I not surprised?
Comment by HaroldHutchison — 11/7/2005 @ 12:34 pm
This story is a fascinating one of the MSM utterly dropping the ball–or perhaps never even picking it up in the first place. Why was there no fact-checking on Massey’s story, even though that would have been fairly easy to do? My belief, which I wrote about here, is that this sort of thing (false claims of US wartime atrocities, and lots of press publicity surrounding them) became popular during Vietnam, a la the Winter Soldier hearings organized by none other than our old friend, John Kerry.
Comment by neo-neocon — 11/8/2005 @ 1:10 pm
One thing that keeps these phony claims from being refuted: Often there are considerations of operational security, and the people who can easily refute this cannot do so without risking the lives of fellow soldiers/Marines.
Comment by HaroldHutchison — 11/8/2005 @ 4:17 pm