When In Doubt, Fake It
Gannett News Service is reporting on a rash of identical letters to the editor “written” by soldiers in Iraq. The letters detail how well things are going, and all the great work being done. This seems like one of those great productions worked up by Dustin Hoffman in Wag the Dog. Check out the story here.
The When In Doubt, Fake It by SharedThought, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
October 15th, 2003 at 5:32 am
This is OLD NEWS.
The story goes like this. A commander wrote the letters and passed them around to his soldiers, and asked them to sign and send one to their local paper if they agreed. Some did. Some did not.
No compulsion here, and the soldiers have been asked if they really agreed with the thrust of the letters and to a man each said they did.
Their families, in many cases, mailed the letters to the papers in a desire to make sure that real story in Iraq gets into the papers.
There’s no conspiracy here. I wonder if you will admit this error?
Here’s the story:
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/WNT/World/iraq031013_letters-1.html
October 15th, 2003 at 11:03 am
John, go read the article from my original post. There was clearly NOT approval of the letters by the individual soldiers. This was a dishonest attempt to sway public opinion at a time when the public is showing growing unease with events in Iraq.
October 15th, 2003 at 1:15 pm
Every soldier they spoke to agrees with the thrust of the letter. Most signed it and sent themselves. Two soldiers don’t think they signed it, but they agree with it. Maybe they signed it and forgot (a grenade explosion tends to cause memory lapses); maybe somebody signed his name without his consent (which would be wrong).
This is a conspiracy?
Your take home message seems to this: there are a lot of troops there who feel that they are doing excellent work in Iraq, and they are worried that the American public is being misled by a cynical media.
None of the soldiers disagrees with the thrust of the letter.
I’ve heard no soldiers saying that they think we should leave Iraq, even when their tours of duty are over.
This isn’t Vietnam here. Though many wish it was.