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You are here: Home / Imagine That!

Imagine That!

by John Cole|  October 14, 20039:40 am| 32 Comments

This post is in: Democratic Stupidity

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I wonder if the lefties who rushed to blame the ‘astroturf’ letters on the Bush administration will be rushing to make a correction?

The letters appeared in roughly 12 newspapers across the country. From Massachusetts to California, and many places in between, family members and local newspapers received letters from soldiers of the 2nd Battalion of the 503rd Infantry Regiment detailing their successes in northern Iraq.

Each letter was signed by a different soldier, but the words were identical:

“Kirkuk is a hot and dusty city of just over a million people. The majority of the city has welcomed our presence with open arms. After nearly five months here, the people still come running from their homes, into the 110-degree heat, waving to us as our troops drive by on daily patrols of the city. Children smile and run up to shake hands and in their broken English shouting, “Thank you, Mister.”

Amy Connell, of Sharon, Mass., knew as soon as she received the letter from her son Adam that he did not write it. “He’s 20 years old and I don’t think his language or his writing ability would have entailed that kind of description,” she said.

She was right. Her son didn’t write the letter. In an e-mail to ABCNEWS today, the commander of the battalion, Lt. Col. Dominic Caraccilo, said the “letter-writing initiative” was all his idea.

Caraccilo said he circulated the form letter to his soldiers to give them “an opportunity to let their respective hometowns know what they are accomplishing here in Kirkuk. As you might expect, they are working at an extremely fast pace and getting the good news back home is not always easy. We thought it would be a good idea to encapsulate what we as a battalion have accomplished since arriving Iraq and share that pride with people back home.”

Hesiod? Oliver? Jeralynn? All of you claimed this would be ‘an embarassment’ to the administration. The administration had nothing to do with it, the soldiers all agree with the letters, and it was just organized by a well-intentioned battalion CO, not Karl Rove. Any apologies?

*** Update ***

I would like to point out that despite what many have said in the comments sectio to this post, I see a significant difference between mass mailings/e-mailings of form letters and what went on here. When a group such as MoveOn.ORg sends a mass e-mailing/petition out, it is under no false pretenses- everyone who received the hundreds/thousands knows it is a mass e-mailing.

There is a a vast difference between that and what was done here- here it was pretended that each soldier wrote the letter (maybe it was not intentional, maybe it was), and that is, IMHO, probably not the most ethical thing in the world for any number of reasons hat do not need to be explored (because they are irrelevant to my complaint). All of this has nothing to do with my bone of contention with Hesiod, Oliver, and TalkLeft on this issue. What bothered me was the IMMEDIATE atempt to claim that the Bush administration was behind this letter writing campaign. They weren’t, and these three websites owe their readers a correction/apology that is at least as forceful as the orginial assertion.

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Reader Interactions

32Comments

  1. 1.

    David Perron

    October 14, 2003 at 10:45 am

    Don’t hold your breath, John. It’s hard enough to even get them to acknowledge that they don’t have (and in fact never had) a point.

  2. 2.

    Oliver

    October 14, 2003 at 11:09 am

    The letters are still false, and I don’t really see how this changes the story at all.

  3. 3.

    David Perron

    October 14, 2003 at 11:11 am

    Other than the tie-in to the administration, Oliver? Which was, in fact, the entire story?

    Yeah, other than that, unchanged.

  4. 4.

    John Cole

    October 14, 2003 at 11:12 am

    Oliver- What planet are you on?

    You used to pretend to be a straight-shooting moderate. I guess the act was too much to keep up.

  5. 5.

    Mark L

    October 14, 2003 at 11:24 am

    Oliver:

    In which way are the letters “false”?

    Are they factually inaccurate?

    Were they not sent voluntarily?

    Do you *really* believe that all letters to the editor are written by the person submitting them?

    If these letters are false are form letter on lefty sites that we are to send to newspapers and legislative officials equally false?

    If so, when was the last time you decried that particular practice, or is the “sin” here whose ox was getting gored?

  6. 6.

    whatever

    October 14, 2003 at 11:31 am

    Move On and the other wack job lefties have form letters to send to editors, congressmen and the like.

    Oh, but THAT’S okay

  7. 7.

    RW

    October 14, 2003 at 11:31 am

    Gotta love it when the “Bush lied” crowd get caught with their pants down and swear they’re wearing overalls.

    Don’t hold your breath waiting for them to admit when they’re wrong….most of them didn’t when Taranto admitted that they misread the blogging $ story last week.

    ’tis better to spew mindless pablum and attract the atriette/drum wackos than be intellectually honest and meet their vitriol, I guess.

  8. 8.

    David Perron

    October 14, 2003 at 11:46 am

    Then there’s the encouragement and talking points to include in your comment, as pointed out by our friend Kimmitt.

  9. 9.

    Pauly

    October 14, 2003 at 11:51 am

    How come Oliver never answers the questions he should be? The ones that usually require him to explain a position using something other than buzzwords? Hell, even an “I realize this has nothing to do with Bush” would be enough. I don’t know about everyone on the right, but at least the rightish blogs that I go to have people who will admit when they are wrong.

  10. 10.

    Andrew Lazarus

    October 14, 2003 at 11:56 am

    I wasn’t aware that we had accused the Bush Administration itself of orchestrating the letter-writing campaign. Anyone who did should take it back. (I’ll follow the links to Hesiod et al later.)

    I’m **extremely uncomfortable,** however, with the idea that *officers* were giving these letters out. Do you see PFCs saying “Sorry, Sarge [Colonel!?], but I don’t want the letter; life here sucks.” I don’t. Don’t you see a possibility for peer pressure or even coercion, first in the letter, and also in backing up the officers afterwards?

    MoveOn has absolutely no way to apply pressure to me to send letters, and when I do so on my own, I always completely rewrite their script because I think form letters are worthless and moreover I frequently want to introduce ideas of my own.

  11. 11.

    David Perron

    October 14, 2003 at 12:09 pm

    Well, Andrew, just as soon as you point out someone who was coerced to sign, I’ll grant that maybe you’ve got a point. Still, no link to the administration makes it a non-story.

    I’m not sure how you missed the Bush connection; here’s what Oliver had to say:
    This week’s PR campaign by Bush has been a pretty naked attempt to spin the ongoing trouble in Iraq as the quick and easy liberation the administration has been claiming all along, heck they’ve even included the First Lady in this news cycle. But there’s more!

    If you can’t see it there, might I suggest a second career as an umpire?

  12. 12.

    David Perron

    October 14, 2003 at 12:16 pm

    Outside of that, Oliver once again completely misses the fact that Bush repeatedly said this was going to be neither easy nor quick. The “Like Flypaper to Stupid” tag is looking more and more apt.

  13. 13.

    Andrew Lazarus

    October 14, 2003 at 1:44 pm

    Yes, Oliver should take that back.

    As far as the easy and quick, Bush admits that now (that even an umpire can see it). What did the Administration say BEFORE the war, David?

    The White House has assembled an Executive Steering Group charged with planning the rebuilding of Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The group foresees a brief rule by an American general…[emphasis added]

    Now, of course, the USA is oppsiing European efforts to turn the government over to Iraqis more quickly. (I’m neutral in that debate for the moment.)

    Mr. Wolfowitz spent much of the hearing knocking down published estimates of the costs of war and rebuilding, saying the upper range of $95 billion was too high [of course, it’s much, much too low]

    Pentagon officials envisioned having about 100,000 troops there immediately after the war, but they hoped that number would be quickly drawn down.

    With a decision about war perhaps only days off, the Bush administration has yet to spell out much of a vision of what would happen once war in Iraq ended, saying only that U.S. troops would liberate the nation but not linger. [empasis added]

    Gen. Tommy Franks, the outgoing head of U.S. Central Command, who told the House Armed Services Committee, “I anticipate we’ll be involved in Iraq in the future. Whether that means two years or four years, I don’t know.”

    He said that in from July of this year. Current estimate is 8 to 10 years, and continually rising.

    How about if you find me even one prewar Administration estimate that even at its uppermost range allowed for eight years and $200Bn, the current minima? (I even think at one point someone in the Administration estimated only 40K troops in Iraq by Fall of 2003, but I couldn;t find that.)

  14. 14.

    David Perron

    October 14, 2003 at 2:09 pm

    Brief RULE, Andrew. And “brief” doesn’t specify a timespan. Nor, to be fair, does “quick”. I’m not going to pay the three bucks for the article, sorry.

    Now, if you’re going to hack on the administration for not having 100% accurate precognition, I’m not going to naysay you. But if you’re going to attempt to make a case for deception, then you’re going to have to come up with some evidence.

    And always remember Murphy’s Law variant: No OPLAN ever survives initial contact.

  15. 15.

    Terry

    October 14, 2003 at 2:56 pm

    As someone above noted, it is kind of fun when the knuckle-draggers like Hesiod and Oliver get caught with their pants down about their ankles and all the world can see that there’s nothing in their pants OR their craniums.

  16. 16.

    Oliver

    October 14, 2003 at 2:57 pm

    There’s the difference between Bush-approved astroturf as we saw before, and this sort of thing which springs up from Bush supporters as well. I never used to be skeptical of our armed forces but they have been so politicized as of late that I have a hard time believing that spontaneously a fradulent letter bolstering the administration’s line on Iraq just happened to strafe across the country. It may not have come from Rove & Co. but the apple doesn’t appear to fall far from the tree.

    President Bush may have never said precisely that Iraq would be quick and easy, but that’s how his underlings (Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld & Cheney) played it. They thought that Chalabi could be another Karzai and be home by Christmas.

    (and by the way-right wing commenters all over my site nowadays, I would look into the Like Flypaper to Stupid tagline)

  17. 17.

    Andrew Lazarus

    October 14, 2003 at 3:10 pm

    David, as it happens, I think many (although not all) of the Administration’s crystal balls are foggy because overarching philosophies We must fight Iraq, tax cuts raise revenues, down is up) are imposed on them, and not from actual venality. [Not all: the claims about the nuclear Saddam-bomb one year off were just to terrify us, and were probably not believed by anyone in the Administration who cared to evaluate them].

    Nevertheless, I think we need to understand how even non-malicious errors which are costing American lives and tens of billions of dollars came about and to make the necessary changes in personnel. Do you think Gray Davis deliberately let the budget go $37Bn in the red? Or did he combine wishful thinking and poor planning?

    As far as coercion, you must be kidding. A grunt is no more likely to complain about his CO’s coercing him to send a pro-Bush-policy letter than to refuse to sign it in the first place. I will be very surprised if this sort of campaign is permitted by army policy.

  18. 18.

    David Perron

    October 14, 2003 at 3:11 pm

    You used to be better than this, Oliver. The troops have been politicized? Based on what evidence? That they say they believe in what they are doing?

    Circular, at best. Jumping to conclusions completely unsupported by…well, by anything, at worst.

  19. 19.

    David Perron

    October 14, 2003 at 3:14 pm

    I’d be surprised if a campaign of coercion wasn’t against army policy, too. That’s just one reason why I think it isn’t one. Another, more important reason is there’s absolutely no evidence to support that it is.

    Lost antecedents? Take a number.

  20. 20.

    Robin Roberts

    October 14, 2003 at 4:28 pm

    Oliver used to be better than that, yes. But no longer.

  21. 21.

    Kimmitt

    October 14, 2003 at 6:26 pm

    Yeah, this wasn’t Administration-approved astroturf; this was one commander sending out astroturf instead.

  22. 22.

    David Perron

    October 14, 2003 at 9:59 pm

    Ding!

    Now, if someone’d just clue me into what “astroturf” means, outside of football…

  23. 23.

    Kimmitt

    October 15, 2003 at 2:54 am

    Astroturf is an extremely cute term for centrally-generated pseudo-grassroots support.

    Fake grassroots. Astroturf.

  24. 24.

    Moe Lane

    October 15, 2003 at 7:49 am

    It -is- a clever term of art, is it not? Honest appreciation, here.

    Does anybody know who came up with it, or was it the industrious Anon of Ibid? :)

    Moe

  25. 25.

    David Perron

    October 15, 2003 at 8:43 am

    I wonder if “centrally-generated” can be stretched to fit if it turns out this was the idea of somebody at the level of, say, captain.

    Thanks for the genesis of the word, Kimmitt. Clever, as Moe says.

  26. 26.

    Janet M

    October 16, 2003 at 3:08 pm

    Why should anyone apologize because it wasn’t engineered by the Bush adminstration? The fact that it was a Bush supporter in the army is better? It’s a very coersive situation when your commanding officer suggests you might like to sign a letter he’s written.

  27. 27.

    Aakash

    October 16, 2003 at 8:22 pm

    “Mark L.” wrote:

    —
    Oliver:

    In which way are the letters “false”?

    Are they factually inaccurate?

    Were they not sent voluntarily?

    Do you *really* believe that all letters to the editor are written by the person submitting them?

    If these letters are false are form letter on lefty sites that we are to send to newspapers and legislative officials equally false?

    If so, when was the last time you decried that particular practice, or is the “sin” here whose ox was getting gored?

    —

    This report from Capitol Hill Blue (a conservative web publication) suggests that those letters may not have been sent voluntarily.

    When Lt. Smash did a recent entry on this subject, he wrote about the ‘form letter’ technique (in a rather positive way), but he also included that Capitol Hill Blue report. (His blog is down for some reason right now; otherwise, I’d link to the entry.)

    I don’t know if that report is accurate, or if the soldiers signed the letters against their wills. But it’s very possible that they may have.

    In related news, I today found the news about the poll taken of our soldiers by Stars and Stripes, the military newspaper.

    Those who are claiming that things in Iraq are not as bad as they may seem (to us over here) for the Iraqis, and for our troops, may be right.

    Things in Iraq may not be as bad as they seem.

    They might be a lot worse.

  28. 28.

    David Perron

    October 17, 2003 at 10:22 am

    Horse hockey, Janet. I get coerced to donate to the United Way every year by my employer; every year I decline to (in favor of donating to specific charities) and there’s no repercussions. I think any Lt. Col that attempted to hammerlock his troops into something like that would quickly be stepped on by an elephant.

    And, to answer your question, apology should be forthcoming because the assertion that the letter-writing campaign was executed by the Bush administration was incorrect and unsupportable. Or do you think lying is ok if you’re lying about someone you don’t like?

  29. 29.

    Foreign Policy realist

    October 17, 2003 at 11:37 pm

    To compare donating to the United Way by one’s employer to a situation such as this, a situation concerning active duty soldiers in an overseas military operation, is wrong, for obvious reasons.

    From the Capitol Hill Blue news item:

    —-

    One soldier, who asked not to be identified, said he was reluctant to sign the letter because he did not agree with the comments in the letter but said he was ordered by a superior officer to sign.

    “When I’m given an order, I obey it,” he said.

    —-

    And as for that Lt. Col. Dominic Caraccilo, he seems to by one not-so-ordinary character. Some research on Google reveals that he has his own agenda, and is willing to put forth a lot of propaganda on behalf of the War Party – regardless of whether it’s true or not.

    And it’s ironic that the war supporters are criticizing Mr. Willis for making a questionable claim (one that may or may not have some truth to it), when the war supporters are the ones who have been putting forth questionable claim after questionable claim, and falsehood, fabrication, and forgery after falsehood, fabrication, and forgery.

Comments are closed.

Trackbacks

  1. One Fine Jay says:
    October 14, 2003 at 11:17 am

    Pro forma, learned from the best

    John Cole takes on the anti-Bushies who derided a pro forma letter coming from so and so many soldiers in Iraq. Identical text, different signature. Nope, it’s not Bush’s fault, as John has found out.

    Interesting. So you have a form letter ta…

  2. Heretical Ideas says:
    October 14, 2003 at 12:07 pm

    APOLOGY ACCEPTED

    A well-meaning Army commander was behind the form letters sent home to families who had sons fighting in Iraq. The letters appeared in roughly 12 newspapers across the country. From Massachusetts to California, and many places in between, family member…

  3. Bendomenech.com says:
    October 16, 2003 at 12:01 am

    The Rundown

    Tacitus travels the world, righting wrongs and condemning evildoers. When it comes to an understanding of the AIDS problem in Africa, he’s got firsthand perspective. By comparison, Yglesias really is an idiot. We should fight AIDS in Africa with every…

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