Because where else do you get quality entertainment like this:
As some of you know, I recently returned from Iraq. This Bob Woodruff story has been bothering me. Something about it stinks.
I have a theory about what likely happened. I think it’s worse than we know.
Update – I suspect that Bob Woodruff was set up by insurgent spies working within the Iraqi Army, and that the US Military was unable to protect him. I want to be clear, this is no conspiracy theory.
***Tonight is the State of the Union Address. I believe that Woodruff was meant to be embedded with an IA unit in order to give the impression that the IA is making “good progress” in “standing up” so that the US can “stand down”. Of course it’s all a con game. I believe Bob Woodruff fell victim to an ill conceived attempt at propaganda.
***Now look, I know I am speculating. But I don’t think you people know how unlikely this attack was to be random. The area Woodruff was in is not that bad. It’s not as if every single convoy gets nailed every time out. In 11 months, my vehicle was never directly targeted. The odds that the insurgents would happen to hit that particular convoy in that particular area is remote. The odds that they would hit Woodruff’s vehicle is also a long shot. And they must have hit it hard. They inflicted serious injury on personel who were riding in a well protected vehicle. Naturally the Army wouldn’t send Wooodruff out in a Toyota, they sent him out in a vehicle that was a hard target.
***I do not believe, nor will I entertain, any conspiracy theories. Just to be clear…
Just to be clear, I don’t think this poor dear has the first clue what a conspiracy theory is, because if this ain’t one, I don’t know what is.
ppGaz
Which is why Uncle Sam spent a fortune and spared no effort to get the man treated and shipped to Germany for top-notch medical care …… ??
Whoever wrote the “article” was probably drunk.
Pb
Well technically it *is* a conspiracy theory, in that it’d be a theory about a possible conspiracy, which is when people plan illegal acts, like blowing up military convoys. However, the theory that some insurgents might conspire to blow up military convoys isn’t exactly nutty or out there, which is the connotation generally ascribed to what people call a ‘conspiracy theory’.
Jay C
Well, John, then obviously the conspiracy has been successful!
Bwahahahaha!
DougJ
This Freeper thread puts that Daily Kos stuff to shame:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1568365/posts
demimondian
John, are you in on the conspiracy, too?
LITBMueller
You do understand, though, that he was discussing whether the insurgents had …. ahem…. conspired to attack the convoy. He’s not saying he think there was a… cough… conspiracy involving the US government.
But, hey, if you want to think about propaganda conspiracies, just check out the Pentagon’s contract with the Lincoln Group.
DougJ
Update – I suspect that Bob Woodruff was set up by insurgent spies working within the Iraqi Army,
That doesn’t seem that far-fetched to me. But then again, I don’t believe that the insurgency is in its last throes or that the economy is the strongest it’s been in a generation or that Karl Rove never looks at poll numbers, so I should probably wear a tinfoil hat to mark myself as a conspiracy nut.
Perry Como
Liberals are grasping at straws, just like the insurgency. After President Bush lays out his bold new plan for America — and the World — expect things to keep getting better.
Ed
I would never say Bill Clinton/George Bush is a lying, cheating, no good son of a bitch, BUT . . . .
Mr.Ortiz
Strictly speaking, yes, he’s saying that insurgents within the Iraqi Army conspired to kill Woodruff.
What he’s trying to quash (however clumsily) is the idea that the Pentagon wanted Woodruff dead (remember, a few on the far left believe that the US Army deliberately targets journalists). In other words, the Pentagon didn’t conspire to kill Woodruff, they just showed really poor judgement in embedding him with Iraqis.
I wanted to clarify that because, if someone only read the bolded portions of your post, it sounds like he’s accusing the Pentagon of setting up a hit on Woodruff.
Pooh
Good god DougJ…do you ever get the feeling that everyone on that website is trolling everyone else or are those all real people?
Steve
It is not a secret that Iraqi forces have been infiltrated by insurgents. See here and here, for example.
What this guy is doing is speculating that Woodruff was targeted by some of these infiltrators, as opposed to just being the victim of a random attack. I don’t see what’s implausible or amusing about this at all.
DougJ
Pooh, they’re not usually that bad, in fairness. Redstate is much worse.
neil
Well, John is right.. it’s literally a theory about a conspiracy. Not a very exciting conspiracy, just a few double-agent soldiers and a few bomb-making insurgents. To me, it seems like a quite plausible conspiracy. It’s not as if the Iraqi insurgents haven’t infiltrated the Iraqi security forces before, and possibly even the American ones, although I sincerely hope not..
The Disenfranchised Voter
True. However the piece was poorly done. He is being extremely vague at first in order to give the impression of a US conspiracy.
Maybe I just took it the wrong way but that is the impression I got from the beginning.
Vladi G
So what exactly is the conspiracy theory, John? I think Pb, Mr. Ortiz, and Steve are pretty much right on, in that, like most crimes committed by more than one person, at some point presumably they conspired to commit the crime. But that doesn’t make this much of a conspiracy theory in the “everybody and his brother shot Kennedy” kind of way.
This person isn’t accusing the government of anything other than embedding a reporter somewhere so that they could show the progress being made (I’d imagine this is something they’d do), then failing to adequately protect that reporter. The writer isn’t saying that the administration hoped Woodruff would get hurt, or targeted Woodruff. Just the opposite, in fact.
John Cole
I never said it was implausible, but since you are humor impaired on just about everything, I will explain why it is amusing.
The reason this is funny is because any way you slice it, it is a conspiracy theory, yet he keeps claiming it isn’t. It may be a very plausible conspiracy theory, but it is still a conspiracy theory.
neil
For that matter, the Plame affair is more or less a conspiracy theory too…
oh shit, Instapundit is going to steal that one for sure.
Lines
Why isn’t Bob Woodward in jail for perjury? Oh, wait, IOKIYAR water carrying bought-and-paid-for journalist.
Vladi G
That would imply that something about the post was funny. It was pretty clear that the guy was using the term “conspiracy theory” as it relates to wild accusations with only the slightest connections to reality. This is where “conspiracy theory” is more a term of art, really, as opposed to literally referring to the dictionary definition of conspiracy.
This must be that conservative humor that people keep talking about.
SeesThroughIt
If they could somehow work the Freemasons and/or the Trilateral Commission in somewhere, then we’d have ourselves some good conspiracy theorizin’!
Paul Wartenberg
Here’s a conspiracy theory worth drooling over:
Tens of congressional aides and government agents logging into Wikipedia to edit biased, whitewashed entries on political bios, political issues, and current events.
No, wait, that’s been proved. Nertz, I can’t keep up anymore! Anyways, what’s the deal with the Black Mailbox at Area 51?! What’s that all about, huh?
Steve
Maybe according to the dictionary. In the real world, let’s take a poll to determine which of these is a “conspiracy theory”:
1) “Osama bin Laden trained and financed terrorists to hijack planes and fly them into the World Trade Center and Pentagon.”
2) “Bush and Cheney planned 9/11 so they could use fear of terrorism to seize absolute power over the nation.”
I’m not allowed to post the results of my poll, so I’m going to wager that 99% of people will say that #1 is the real version of events, while #2 is a “conspiracy theory.” But of course, they’re both conspiracies, in the sense of multiple people making an agreement.
“Conspiracy theory,” I explained to the communications professor, “is a term which is generally understood to mean a theory postulating that a bunch of people conspired to carry out some act which everyone else assumes was committed by a single person.” The CIA was behind the Kennedy assassination? Conspiracy theory. Tom Brady threw a screen pass on 3rd down? Not a conspiracy theory, no matter how many times you point out that it takes 11 people acting in concert to execute a football play.
The subject of this post, sad to say, has more in common with Tom Brady than Lee Harvey Oswald. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you find it funny, John, as there is not enough humor in the world.
Patrick Lightbody
I believe that the attack on Bob Woodruff was organized by a CIA-backed, crack-addicted black guy who used weapons he left over from the CONTRAs. Or an alien that escaped from Area 19. And that, my friend, is f-a-c-t.
stickler
Is it really so crazy to imagine that a high-profile guest like ABC’s new evening anchorman would attract a lot of attention?
Is it also so crazy to imagine that the insurgents might have been given some heads-up about his location and destination?
I mean, come on: we depend almost entirely on locals for translating to Arabic. Doesn’t anyone remember how that turned out for us in Vietnam? The VC had agents who translated by day and reported their translations back to Hanoi by night. It’s hardly far-fetched to imagine something similar going on right now in Iraq.
Steve Verdon
The truly ironic, at least for me, is that this is precisely the same kind of reasoning used by Creationist and Intelligent Design proponents. It looks too improbably to have formed by nature. It looks too improbable to have been a random attack.
The problem is that the improbable does happen (ask any lottery winner). When it does happen, it is still–a priori–just as improbable. Without further evidence this guy is spinning am unlikely theory.
Jason P.
Nothing like DailyKos to combine some of the best commentary on Democratic politics (Kos, Armando), some of the most fervent pandering by the Democratic politicians (John Kerry’s blog entries), and some of the looniest outside-the-mainstream lefty jibber jabber (see article mentioned above and anything calling for major Democratic Senate resignations because a 44-56 minority couldn’t stop Alito).
Stormy70
Whir, whir, whir. They are coming to get you!
stickler
Um, what is this supposed to mean? “They” are doing a fine job “coming to get” our soldiers. 63 dead soldiers in January 2006 alone.
And a badly-wounded ABC anchorman, too.
How do you think “they” are doing this, Stormy? Magic? Blind good luck, day in and day out?
Richard Bottoms
Please, let’s not confuse him with something other than what sounds like a good laugh.
The insurgents would never target a specifc American or try to embarass the administration or kidnap some cute female reporter and threaten her life for propaganda purposes.
Only our side knows anything about tactics or psychological warfare. They are savages, they don’t read newspapers or watch TV.
Why if terrorists really wanted to make a point they’d take two of our most technologically advanced creations, say jet airliners maybe, and attack two of our greatest symbols of capitalism. On the same day. In front of our own disbelieving eyes.
Or not. Probably just some idea Tom Clancy wrote about.
Bruce Moomaw
I don’t see anything “conspiratorial” about Kos’ theory. It’s perfectly logical that the Army would want to stick Woodruff in an Iraqi Army unit to show that we were making “progress” in Iraqizing the war; and it’s perfectly logical that, once the insurgents got wind of this, they’d decide to shove a bloody pie in America’s face. What would be conspiratorial is if Kos said that the US`Army deliberately set Woodruff up to get shot — and that is precisely what he does NOT say.
Bruce Moomaw
The only thing that’s required to make Kos’ theory work is that the Iraqi Army be riddled with insurgent agents. Which, er, it is. (Of course, by the same token, it doesn’t make much different politically whether Kos is right or not, since he’s not saying that Uncle Sam deliberately set Woodruff up.)
KC
I saw that at Kos and had to skip it.
Lines
The part that is conpirational is the Administration using Woodruff for the SOTU as proof that Iraq is safer. I think having the intelligence agencies look into the theory that insurgents within the Iraqi forces set up Woodward would be a good idea.
Jack Burton
Why on earth would the insurgents target a journalist?
Whole else is going to carry their story?
And to rile up the natives a little – since American journalists go out of their way to not take sides in a war so as to not lose their objectivity, exactly why do I care, as an American, if an American journalist has been injured? Of course there’s a human sadness and sympathy for the family, but not in a sense that I feel a connection with them. I believe in cheering for the home team, something that hasn’t been chic in journalism since Ernie Pyle in WWII.
Pooh
Absolutely. Looking at it from their standpoint, it certainly makes a degree of tactical sense – though that depends somewhat on what their strategic aims are. But I don’t think those aims are homogenous across all insurgency groups.
Jack Burton
How on earth could they have predicted when Woodruff and camera man would have their heads out of the back hatch to film when the bomb went off? That’s why they were injured so badly.
So unless there’s an Iraqi soldier in the vehicle who said right before the explosion “this would be a great place to stick your head out of the hatch” it’s probably bull.
Steve
Well, that’s kind of like saying that since al-Qaeda had no way of knowing the WTC buildings would be harmed enough to fall down, there’s no way they could have planned 9/11.
The question is whether the insurgents knew a U.S. journalist would be in this convoy and deliberatedly targeted it as a result. Whether they did or didn’t, who knows. But the extent of his injuries is simply a bonus, from their perspective. I’d imagine their goal would be more like “let’s get this reporter to go back and report how dangerous and deadly we insurgents are!”
Bill Arnold
Somebody needs to teach the KOSites (and Freepers) about the principle of least conspiracy – “Never attribute to conspiracy that which is adequately explained by incompetence” (various sources).
BadTux
John, it’s no conspiracy theory that the Iraqi Army has been infiltrated and infiltrated hard by the insurgency. On the other hand, it is unlikely that this Iraqi unit had the slightest idea where they were going until the minute they left camp, because U.S. forces figured this out long ago. Returning Iraqi veterans have told me that they swiftly noticed that if they told the Iraqis they were patrolling with where they were going beforehand, the insurgents seemed to always be waiting for them. As vs. if they didn’t tell the Iraqis jack, they got less insurgent fire. So nowdays, they tell the Iraqis where they’re going only after it’s too late for the insurgents embedded in the Iraqi Army to inform their brethren about the route of the convoy.
Now, if this was directed by the freakin’ REA’s who told Iraqi REA’s before the convoy was formed and left (if you don’t know what a REA is, the first two words are “rear echelon”, the last is a part of the body), then it COULD have been a set-up. But no “conspiracy” would be required, only known fact — that the Iraqi Army has been infiltrated by the insurgency all the way to its upper echelons (remember the battalion commander removed from duty a few months ago?!). If anybody in the Iraqi Army knew where the convoy was going before it left the base, that convoy was getting hit — period. And if they knew there were going to be two reporters in the convoy (they consider “embedded” reporters to be paid propagandists for the U.S. military and thus valid military targets), those reporters most definitely would have been preferred targets for the insurgents — even to the point of blowing up a Russian armored car filled with their own countrymen.
It would be very interesting — very interesting indeed — to know whether anody in that armored car did anything that would mark it out to the insurgents that it was the car with their targets in it. It would not surprise me if an embedded insurgent with a martyr complex decided to commit suicide and take two “Great Satans” with him by doing something that would tell the insurgents “Hit this car!”, those MF’s are freakin’ *NUTS*. But I doubt we’ll ever know.
— BadTux the Military Penguin
Bob In Pacifica
The reason why that poor soul kept on denying that his conspiracy theory was a conspiracy theory was that there has been a war waged in our society to deny that powerful people work secretly and in concert to do illegal things. Sometimes these things come to light, like parts of Iran-contra (while other parts remain submerged from the mainstream). There are a lot of people who think that Bush et al were behind 9/11. There is certainly plenty on record that doesn’t jibe with official accounts of the hijackers’ whereabouts and connections. But I haven’t seen any proof that Bush was anything more than incompetent in the days before 9/11.
Back in Nazi Germany they were called alarmists. You know, if they’re building camps and they’re spying on us, something bad may happen. Those were the alarmists. Maybe nothing bad happened to them.
The Other Steve
See, this is why Glenn Reynolds doesn’t have comments on his site. Because he’s afraid someone will post something nutty(not at all surprising on a rightwing blog), and then it will get linked everywhere as an example of why people love Glenn Reynolds.
carpeicthus
By that logic, Glenn shouldn’t have posts on his site, either. It’s a virtual certainty they’ll be nutty.
carpeicthus
Wow, DougJ, I checked out your Freeper posts. You need some new hobbies, man. ;-)
I used to check out those psychopaths all the time in the 90’s. It was so much more fun when they were always pissed off.
Richard Bottoms
True. :-)
Richard Bottoms
You mean like this one?
Ohhh wait a minute. You’re not one of those people who think telling the truth about how this war has been botched means the reporters doing it are rooting for the insurgents to win are you?
Pelikan
Oh Doug, why did you have to go and talk about that thread? I followed that link and now I have to sit here, weeping for humanity. John Cole, if you are reading, I sat down with one of my employees today. He was a goddamn earth-first fool, an actual sophmore in college. We talked about reality, gradual social gains, Martin Luther King’s approach, reality, the fact that not everybody likes being lectured to and reality.
I did my part, I hope you realize that you, and every other republican voter, are responsible for those backbirths on that thread, because they seem far, FAR stupider than my poor employee, and it took a lot of beating him about he head and shoulders before he caved in and promised to be civil.
Cordially yours,
The Pelikan
Jack Burton
Telling the truth?
I love it when people use that phrase. It typically comes from people who have never been in Iraq. You see you have two totally opposing voices over there, the troops who say it’s getting better and the journalists who say it’s a disaster. Many journalists who apparently refuse to leave protected areas. Tells a lot about who you are that you automatically subscribe to the thought that the journalists are automatically telling the “truth”.
The Other Steve
We will let Jill Carroll know about this when she get’s back from her execution. And that Woodruff guy when he gets out of the hospital.