Shortly after impugning the education and intelligence of U.S. soldiers, Senator John Kerry visited an army base in Iraq. A number of right-of-center blogs carried a photograph of him sitting in the mess hall at a table with zero soldiers. The rather obvious moral was that his condescending attitude had made him less than wildly popular among the troops. Various left-wingers promptly indulged their standard fantasies.
It was, of course, our friends on the left who insisted that the photo itself was bogus by challenging facts of Kerry’s travel schedule, the data embedded in the photo, the decorations on the walls around him, etc, forcing our other friends at Powerline and elsewhere to prove that, yes indeed, that is a chow hall in Iraq, and yes indeed, Kerry was there at the specified time in question, yes indeed, most people don’t set the dates on their digital cameras, yes indeed, the decorations are there as in the photo, and yes indeed, there is a Portuguese flag hanging there even though Portugal has no troops in Iraq anymore. Our friends on the left toss up silly conspiracy theories with multiple moving parts, our friends on the right spend hours and hours shooting said conspiracy theories down. That’s just how it works most of the time.
Now a diligent leftoid has uncovered the truth: Senator Kerry chose not to breakfast with American soldiers. Instead he set up a briefing with a pair of reporters, to whom he no doubt had vitally important information to impart. “In fact, Kerry and the reporters even sought out empty seats, I’m told.” In other words, he didn’t care to spend time in the company of the undereducated morons who “get stuck in Iraq”. They didn’t spurn him; he spurned them.
So it’s clear that the “wingnuts” were wrong about the Senator. I trust that they’re ashamed of themselves.
Addendum: Captain Ed, showing the conciliatory penchant of most leading right-of-center bloggers, has apologized rather abjectly for joining in “the snark” over the Kerry photo. The leftoid referred to above, the Captain avers, “pretty much demolishes the notion that Kerry couldn't buy a friend in Iraq”.
Really? Senator Kerry was in the mess hall of a U.S. military base at meal time. Either (i) he passed up talking to our servicemen in favor of imparting his own wisdom to reporters, or (ii) he knew full well that he would eat alone unless he set up a meeting with outsiders. Whichever was the case, the photo illustrates it neatly.
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