Can you say Stephen Glass?

"Looking back on it now, it makes so much sense. I don't know how I could have been such an idiot," said Michael Brenner, the former Daily Egyptian reporter who first wrote about Kodee, and then spent two years staying in contact as a close friend of her and her purported aunt and guardian, who said her name was Colleen Hastings.

Oh, I have an idea or two on how.

Yes, yes and according to the current neocon playbook, this hoax de-legitimizes any pain felt by real children who have lost real Daddies. Because this particular story is a hoax, all must be ignored, right neocons?

no, dickweed. But it does mean your political confreres in the mainstream media (okay, this was a student newspaper, but still) really can't just make shit up to advance their/your agenda.

Make shit up to advance an agenda? What, you mean like al Queda ties and Weapons of Mass destruction? You mean like flowers in the streets and the flowering of democracy?

Funny, because the flower thing happened. And the democracy thing happened, and is happening. Just because you liberated a country doesn't mean they are always going to offer babies to kiss and roses to you. Look at the French.

As for Al Qaeda and WMD, well, 1. "Salman Pak" and 2. Everybody in the flipping world thought Saddam had it, and I'm not convinced he didn't ship it out. I seem to recall a lot of mustard gas seized in a failed terrorist attack in Jordan a few months after the fall of Baghdad that nobody seemed real interested in tracing.

I second ace's description:

Dickweed!

1.) Al Queda ties? Yes, Bill, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been in Iraq long before our invasion, and he is Al Queda.

2.) Weapons of Mass Destruction? Yes, all intelligence sources pointed in that direction. Also, Bill Clinton thought there were WMD's there. Where is the lie?

3.) Flowers in the Streets? As a matter of fact, yes, in many places that is the reception we are getting. You are just a liberal wacko and only want to see the bad. Have you talked to any soldiers serving over there? I have several friends serving and many Iraqi's greet them as brothers.

Even if everything Bill alleges about the Bush Admin is true, which its not, he's admitting that the media is nothing more than an adjunct of the Dems / Lefties. Which we all know that they are.

Funny, I thought the media was supposed to be the proxy watchdog for the public, catching politicians in their lies - not just another bunch of lying politicians.

SIU. It figures.

I find the story of the unravelling of this hoax to be fascinating. It's possibly even more interesting than the topic a troll has reset this thread to have.
There's a kid who taken to different states and told she was starring in a movie filmed by hidden cameras. A memorial service for a non-existent dead soldier. A fat woman talking for hours on the phone in a little girl's voice. Two year's worth of non-checking by a newspaper staff while they ran letter after sad little letter.
All the important stuff.

*flips to page 47 of the neocon playbook*

yep. he's right. check out the footnote where it drives em batshit that we get away with it too, so much so that they get a crazy woman to pretend to be a war orphan, and defend it as noble.

I wuv you mommy.

Newsflash: the woman is now on her way to Crawford...

...developing.

The siren song of catered food was just too compelling.

LOL@Tony.

One of Tim's commenters had little Kodee down there running an organic lemonade stand. I about fell out.

Two hoaxes with a star named Cody/Kodee. ;)

[blockquote] can't just make shit up to advance their/your agenda.[/blockquote]

Come on Ace, you know the Left doesn't have any kind of an agenda, or plan, or message, or ......

Another published letter, purportedly by Kodee, asked: "Are you still coming home dad? I'm still here without you ... Hey dad I dug a fox hole. It is regulashin ... Can you kill all the bad guys now so Air Force One can bring you home?"

So, I guess this girl was supposed to be 8 and retarded?

I agree with Bill: it's inaccurate but true. Whatever the lefties like Bill say, HAS to be true. You small thinkers are limited by facts and reality, while BIll and all us lefty BIG thinkers know the TRUTH (which of course is much truer than facts and reality). Thank you Bill for your "reality" based analysis. Say, I forget-- how's that National Guard Memo working out? Did it win for us.?Your fellow leftwing nut, inacurately but true , john.

Are you mad at me Chuck? Why are you mad at me? Please don't be made at me, Chuck.

"The reasons behind the lies remain unclear. There appears to have been no monetary motive, but the scope of the deception is staggering."

Hmmmm...I could take a few guesses at the motive, here, Mr. Reporter.

SIU. A buddy did law school there. Good college town, lots of good bars, lots of moonbats.

Missive, it's interesting that the only example of an al Queda terrorist you cite is Abu al Zarqawi. You've got your facts a little twisted here. Zarqawi wasn't recognized as a member of the group until after the invasion when he made it known to them that he wanted to join. He had been based in Kurdish-controlled Northern Iraq, out of Saddam Hussein's influence and, according to a report issued by our own Pentagon, and reported in 2003 by the Washington Post, the military offered the administration at least three opportunities to strike at and possibly kill Zarqawi before the invasion. They knew exactly where he was. According to the report, the Bush administration turned down each request because they felt killing him would undercut their argument that there were terrorists in Iraq. This was a political decision on their part and Zarqawi went on to reek havok in Iraq. Now why don't any of you hold the Bush administration responsible for Zarqawi's personal beheadings of Americans in Iraq? And, by the way, my name is not "dickweed." I don't know what a dickweed is, but I do know that calling someone names is a poor substitute for an argument.

John, the National Guard Memo may or may not have been a fake. That hasn't really been established, even if you think it has. It said Bush got special treatment during the Viet Nam War. Evidently, you think that is a lie. The same week the government removed the student deferrment as a way to avoid service, Bush magically appeared at the top of a list of hundreds waiting for a spot. In spite of scoring at the minimum acceptable number, 25%, on the entrance exam, Bush got a plum assignment as a training pilot usually reserved for the top 5%. Those are the facts and if you don't see any truth the assertion that he got special treatment, that's your problem. Right after the government decided to institute drug testing for training pilots, Bush refused to take a physical. After a questionable transfer to another unit, there is no record that Bush reported for duty for at least 3 months. At the time, the military defined AWOL as being unaccounted for for 30 days or more. Facts, people. Facts are not your friends!

John, the National Guard Memo may or may not have been a fake. That hasn't really been established, even if you think it has.

Bullshit. I work with type and I'm old. No typewriter of the era could have produced that memo, period. MS Word reproduced it perfectly, first try. No fiddling. The reluctance of anyone to accept that, when the two are laid side by side, is willful blindness of the most basic kind.

I wouldn't doubt for a moment Bush got preferential treatment. It happens to rich kids from important families. It's an annoying fact of life, but it is not and never has been the huge story you hoped it would be. It certainly wasn't worth deep-sixing careers over. Jeez, if you're going to fake something, make it something good. "Rich boys have it easier" is not a scoop.

Bill, have you, perchance, read "The Republic of Fear?" Just wondering. Do you in fact know anything about Iraq, what it was like?

yes Bill and don't Forget the UNIMPEACHABLE SOURCE Bill Burkett. Now let's see just where were these SECRET FILES held for 30 Years? And now what was the super duper secret lady's name that gave the memo's to Mr UNIMPEACHABLE Burkett?---I'm sure our "reality based" research can come upwith her name. No doubt our research also has some SECRET FILES held on Justice Roberts concerning his high school years. Guess we ought to check some of our other UNIMPEACHABLE SOURCES. NOW that Dan Rather has more time on his hands, Lets sic him on this, because we really are concered with maintaining our cridability. Yeh we've got them just where we want them. They've got facts and reality on their side, but us BIG thinkin' liberals have TRUTH on ours. Your fellow left wing nut,as always innacruate but TRUE, john

Looking at the letters written by the fake little girl, it isn't clear that the motive was anti-war. The letters are all over the top pro war: "Kill all the bad guys before they kill you," type stuff. Not what you would expect anti-war types to write. Why go for some kind of reverse psychology when "daddy please stop fighting and come home" is such an anti-war no-brainer? I won't be suprised if this turns out to be a pro-war hoax.

You missed the punchline Alec - "daddy" can't come home because he got killed.

Bill, you have to be fucking THICK in the skull to think that Rather was forced to resign over authentic memos.

The following is just from a cursory google, you can dig up LOADS more if you're inclined:

Quote below:

AUSTIN, Texas — The man named in a disputed memo as exerting pressure to "sugarcoat" George W. Bush's military record left the Texas Air National Guard a year and a half before the memo supposedly was written, his service record shows. An order obtained by The Dallas Morning News shows that Col. Walter "Buck" Staudt was honorably discharged March 1, 1972. CBS News reported this week that a memo in which Staudt was described as interfering with officers' negative evaluations of the future president's service was dated Aug. 18, 1973.

A detailed comparison by The Washington Post of memos obtained by CBS News with authenticated documents on Bush's National Guard service reveals dozens of inconsistencies, ranging from conflicting military terminology to different word-processing techniques.

The analysis shows that half a dozen Killian memos released earlier by the military were written with a standard typewriter using different formatting techniques from those characteristic of computer-generated documents. CBS's Killian memos bear numerous signs that are more consistent with modern-day word-processing programs, particularly Microsoft Word.

"I am personally 100 percent sure that they are fake," said Joseph M. Newcomer, author of several books on Windows programming, who worked on electronic typesetting techniques in the early 1970s. Newcomer said he had produced virtually exact replicas of the CBS documents using Microsoft Word formatting and the Times New Roman font.

I'm going to remember this, pal, when you say that we are the ones with blinders on.

Alec: it wouldn't work for 2 years if it came straight out of moonbat left field. You've got to build up to the little girl losing faith in America to make the story work right. By the end she's asking about Bush having a soldier in the war. Clearly a reference to his daughters not being in the military, a favorite moonbat attack.

When was the last time you saw a pro-war series in a college newspaper? Unless it's one of the Academies, it's just not likely.

The records show that Bush was unaccounted for during a period of at least three months. Under military law, circa late 60's-early 70's, he was technically AWOL. Does this matter? Not really. It's just one more detail in the large picture of who George W. Bush is.

Desperation is
Bringing up old stories from
A finished campaign

Lefties try so hard
But all they have to offer
Is more of the same