Another Manufactured "Liberal Media Lie" Turns Out To Be True

Technorati Tags: Larry Johnson, food delivery delay, mainstream media, journalistic fraud

Glenn Greenwald pens a superb (and very funny) expose of the latest right-wing attempt to manufacture a scandal about fraudulent "liberal media" reporting:

The genius investigators in the right-wing blogosphere -- who serve as our Watchdogs over the Corrupt "MSM" -- made a major, major discovery this weekend. Last Wednesday, former CIA agent Larry Johnson published a Memo (.pdf) sent from the U.S. Mission in Iraq which advised troops and other military personnel in Iraq of a "theater-wide delay in food delivery" which would likely limit the available food supply.

As has been true for the last four years, right-wing bloggers simply shut their eyes and refused to believe that any news reflecting poorly on the Leader's War could be real. Just as was true for news reports of civil war and a growing Iraqi insurgency, this Memo just had to be a fake, so they declared it to be such.

The super-tough-(and-anonymous)-Churchillian-warrior "Ace of Spades" got the investigative ball rolling, declaring: "that document is fake" (emphasis in original). "Ace" then explained: "someone is attempting to gin up a rather minor convoy delay into something that threatens the feeding of our troops." These accusations were grounded in "Ace's" belief that an eagle in the corner of the memo was inauthentic, copied from a figurine. Upon finding the image online, "Ace" excitedly announced that he discovered "How The Retarded Forger Found The Image."

"Ace" then added an update citing as support for his conclusion of a "Forgery!" the "analysis" of that highly-impressive-document-expert Charles Johnson, of LGF. Johnson -- in a post entitled "Fake But Accurate, Nutroots Edition" -- announced:

Ace of Spades exposes another probable anti-war fraud, an "internal memo" with a "military logo" that turns out to be ... a Hummel figurine.

Johnson christened their exciting new "MSM" scandal "Hummelgate," and announced that "'Hummelgate' hits the Washington Post; they quote from the memo in this article" [here]. Johnson then issued a painstaking analysis of the .pdf properties as further "proof" of the document's fakeness.

All of that, needless to say, provoked a whole slew of braying, celebratory right-wing bloggers denouncing the MSM for their outrageous fraud against the Leader and the War. ...
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Needless to say, the memo is authentic. And some of the accusers are slowly starting to admit it (with no apologies to Johnson or The Washington Post for impugning their integrity, from what I have seen).
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Right-wing bloggers and "Pajamas Media" spent all weekend calling Larry Johnson a liar and a fraud when the only liars and frauds were, as usual, them. And now that they stand exposed, yet again, as reckless and fact-free hysterics, they will simply move, unperturbed, onto their next manufactured scandal, with the expectation that they will be taken seriously. Is it really any wonder that not even their own party -- which venerates people like Rush Limbaugh -- takes right-wing blogs seriously?