In recent days there has been a
tempest brewing in the
right-wing teapot over one
Jesse MacBeth, a purported Army Ranger who may or may not exist. His story has already been
debunked, but not before everyone's favorite ten-toed sloth Michelle Malkin drooled all over the story. Finally, a temporary distraction from the implosion of Leader's domestic poll ratings and foreign policy!
Now, here's my conspiracy theory. This was an attempt to Ratherize the anti-war left. Bring out a "combat veteran", have him make some pretty serious charges about our conduct of the war in Iraq (like fake ones needed to be cooked up), get the left all atwitter and then- HA! He's a FAKE! Just like that Texans for Truth guy! Fooled you!
But the problem was that people, you know, asked for second-source material and didn't take the story at face value. Basically, every element was there except for the most necessary one- the "Left" (or, people against the war, who are by no means primarily "leftist" these days) needed to buy in. And they didn't, not really. A couple of sites ran coverage of the story, but to hear Malkin grunt it he was a "cause celebre of the Left". But what if they gave a cause celebre, and no one celebre'd?
So it's basically right-wing bullshit. Without going too far off the deep-end, I'm willing to bet that someone- some right wing think tank with nothing better to do with their endowment than invent cloak-and-dagger nonsense- probably hired this MacBeth guy to pose as an army ranger, set him up and knock him down. He got sussed out quickly by research ninjas on the various blogs, and this leads me to my point.
It's not one that needs reinforcing, but CHECK EVERYTHING with an independent source, people. If it's true that this guy's story was invented to discredit the left, and it didn't work out as planned, be assured that there will be other, more sophisticated attempts at disinformation made to muddy the waters. The Right are scared, this is their war, and the public are turning- have turned- against it. They don't have anything in their arsenal besides attacking us- they certainly don't have the truth, which has long since abandoned them- and where there's smoke, there's fire. Just keep on your toes, peeps, that's all.