citizen53 earlier in the evening posted
this diary entry citing a website/blog (thecarpetbaggerreport.com) listing of Dean's purported statements about the war.
The statements were proven to be taken out of context and clipped to fit the original poster's (carpetbagger's) purposes which were to show that Dean flip-flopped on the war.
(Please note thatI am using citizen53's post as an example of what has become increasingly common in the diary section of DKos.)
Citizen53 states in his/her post:
I think the linked post is factual. It quotes Dean's statements in many instances...
...I believe that it's important that a candidate be credible, and some of the information from the linked post troubles and confuses me.
The information cited was not from a news source, but rather a website/blog snipping from original news sources.
citizen53 is not a new poster to this board. As such, one would think that he/she and others who have cited this same distorted and twisted information verbatim in the past would know better than to rely on such annotated, hearsay garbage and then to innocently claim that the provided link is used only for starting a "rational discussion" on Dean's war position.
Later, when asked why he/she would use such unverifiable information as a jumping off point for such a discussion, citizen53 posted that he/she "could not vouch" for the information from the site.
It was posted as a slanted Dean slam. Period. And if citizen53 didn't know better, I'd be surprised.
To make the point, I am posting a link to this site, which is called "Wesley Clark is a War Criminal."
Using citizen53's standard of "I can't vouch for the information contained on the site," I want to have a discussion of whether or not Wesley Clark is a war criminal.
Of course I don't! But I'm making a point.
It is disingenous to post links to unsubstantiated or out-of-context websites that don't contain full source materials, and then claim (as if one didn't know better) that the post was only to serve as a starting point for "discussion."
One other point: the attacks on Dean have gotten more frequent here in the diaries of late and I expect they will continue to get more intense as Iowa, New Hampshire and the early February primaries near. (He is the frontrunner, after all.)
That said, I make this simple observation... some folks here seem to spend an inordiante amount of their time posting negative/attacking/questioning posts about Dean as opposed to positive posts about their own, chosen candidates. I also note that while there is an awful lot of Dean "cheerleading" going on here, as well (too much for my tastes), one may also note that the Dean supporters in general seem to spend much less time making negative diary entries about Clark and Gep and only ocassional swipes at Kerry.
Sure, I and others could go out and collect websites like the "Clark is a War Criminal" site mentioned above, but most of us recognize biased garbage when we see it.
Apparently, this isn't true for everyone...