{"id":9466,"date":"2006-12-28T15:23:20","date_gmt":"2006-12-28T20:23:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/9466.html"},"modified":"2006-12-28T15:23:20","modified_gmt":"2006-12-28T20:23:20","slug":"conservatives-shoot-and-miss-with-kerry-pic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/conservatives-shoot-and-miss-with-kerry-pic\/","title":{"rendered":"Conservatives shoot and miss with Kerry pic"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"kerry\"
\nI’ll spare you the litany of links, but several of the right’s major blogs yesterday were all aflutter<\/a> over a picture of John Kerry, in Iraq a couple of weeks ago, apparently sitting alone at a mess hall. The picture, as the story went, proves that Kerry’s “botched joke” has caused lingering resentment among men and women in uniform. If the troops respected Kerry, he wouldn’t have been sitting by himself at the breakfast shown in the photo.<\/p>\n

The photo, and the accompanying narrative about how the troops avoided Kerry, made the rounds by way of far-right radio-host Scott Hennen, who claims<\/a> the “priceless story” was sent by “a friend of mine serving in Iraq.” (If Hennen’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he has an interesting history<\/a> with the White House.)<\/p>\n

The problem, however, is that the “priceless story” may not be true. Justin Rood explains<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At Hennen’s site, commenter “Anthony” noted<\/a> that the picture’s embedded data, just a right-click<\/a> away, shows the picture was taken on January 9, 2006 — several months before Kerry botched his joke….<\/p>\n

News accounts<\/a> at the time put Kerry in England around that time — which might explain the giant Union Jack<\/a> hanging on the far wall.<\/p>\n

At PowerLine, another problem surfaced: As commenter “Angus” noted<\/a>, the flag hanging to the right of the Union Jack belongs to Portugal<\/a>, which withdrew<\/a> its mighty 120-man coalition force from Iraq nearly two years ago.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Between Cliff May’s email<\/a> yesterday, and Kerry’s questionable pic today, the right isn’t having any luck at all, are they?
\n
\nAt a certain point, this is just trivia. The right enjoys taking cheap shots at Kerry, so whether the photo — and the story behind the photo — are legitimate or not is almost irrelevant. If we learn for certain the picture is not what Hennen and others claim, they’ll just find some other reason to smear Kerry.<\/p>\n

But a few certain facts remain:<\/p>\n

* Kerry is a decorated war hero, and most of his critics aren’t.<\/p>\n

* Any suggestion that Kerry’s “botched joke” was criticism of the troops is ridiculous.<\/p>\n

* Kerry chose to spend time during the holiday season with troops in Iraq, and most of his critics didn’t.<\/p>\n

* Kerry has spent the past few years being right about the war in Iraq, and most of his critics haven’t.<\/p>\n

This isn’t about 2008; this is about a little decency. There’s reason to believe the photo is bogus, but even if we never know for sure, the glee with which the right smears Kerry is absurd.<\/p>\n

Update<\/strong>: I have a follow-up post on this subject here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ll spare you the litany of links, but several of the right’s major blogs yesterday were all aflutter over a picture of John Kerry, in Iraq a couple of weeks ago, apparently sitting alone at a mess hall. The picture, as the story went, proves that Kerry’s “botched joke” has caused lingering resentment among men […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9466\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}